From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,DATE_IN_PAST_24_48, FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,d5b211b0c1ffcf3e X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Received: by 10.204.141.4 with SMTP id k4mr398382bku.6.1339692791553; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:53:11 -0700 (PDT) Path: e27ni47945bkw.0!nntp.google.com!news1.google.com!postnews.google.com!h10g2000pbi.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail From: quiet_lad Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Practicalities of Ada for app development Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 03:20:55 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <4dc8878f-22d7-44fb-866e-48b70d770eb3@h10g2000pbi.googlegroups.com> References: <79c5c9f7-4b72-4990-8961-b3e2db4db79b@qz1g2000pbc.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 173.60.202.188 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1339582856 27919 127.0.0.1 (13 Jun 2012 10:20:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2012 10:20:56 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: h10g2000pbi.googlegroups.com; posting-host=173.60.202.188; posting-account=P7XY3woAAADWVZ3Q8yfcXP4_h9XhQ8Kj User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Opera/9.80 (X11; FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE amd64; U; en) Presto/2.10.229 Version/11.60,gzip(gfe) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: 2012-06-13T03:20:55-07:00 List-Id: On Jun 8, 2:35=A0pm, Jeffrey Carter wrote: > On 06/08/2012 01:48 PM, wrp wrote: > > > > > 1. To begin with, I've heard it said that Ada, designed for embedded > > system building, is simply not suited to apps for a general computing > > platform. That's rather vague and I haven't seen any detailed > > justification of that claim. What would you say? > > I would say everything you've heard is wrong. Ada is a general-purpose la= nguage > that has been used successfully in every application domain. Ada is the l= anguage > of choice for S/W that must be correct. Since I want all my S/W to be cor= rect, I > always use Ada. Examples of small Ada applications I've written include o= ne to > choose the signature (like the one at the end of this message), one to ch= oose > the sound to be played next time I log in (next time it will say, "What i= s your > favorite color?"), and one to display a quote in a dialog window (today's= is, > "If you think you got a nasty taunting this time, you ain't heard nothing > yet!"). There seems to be a theme there. > > A larger application is the Mine Detector game > (http://pragmada.x10hosting.com/mindet.html). > > At work we have a large, concurrent, distributed, soft-real-time, web-acc= essible > call-center application, but large parts of it do DB access and things th= at > would be common in the kind of applications you want to make. > > > 2. I don't need tools to be free, but they have to be affordable to a > > small shop. If I'm targeting x86-64 (and possibly ARM) is GNAT the > > only compiler option I have? > > RR Software's Janus/Ada (for Windows) is reasonably priced. You might als= o look > at Atego. > > Note that most compiler are for Ada 95. Only 3 of 7 compilers I'm aware o= f > support the entire language in the current standard (published in 2007). = GNAT is > the only compiler I'm aware of that supports features from the next stand= ard > (hopefully published this year). > > Ada 95 is a very good language, so that might not be a concern. (Even Ada= 83 is > a better language than most of the competition.) > > > 3. How about the quality and availablity of supporting tools like > > debuggers and profilers? > > One nice thing about Ada is not needing to use a debugger. > > > 4. How about production quality, open source libraries for things like > > Unicode support, sockets, network communication, GUIs, etc? The stuff > > atwww.dmitry-kazakov.delooks good, but most of what I have seen > > online is from the 1980s and pretty rough to begin with. > > There are plenty of libraries available. You can find many through adaic.= org. > > > 5. How well is incremental development supported? I'm thinking of > > things like modular compiling and speed of the edit-compile-test > > cycle. > > Unlike C, Ada has modules ("packages"). With them, stubs, and separate > compilation, incremental development is supported well. > > > 6. Size and latency are sometimes an issue. I've heard that since GNAT > > is oriented to building larger systems, the executables it produces > > are comparatively bulky. What is the situation relative to C in that > > regard? > > As I've said, everything you've heard is wrong. Equivalent programs in Ad= a and C > create executables of about the same size using gcc (the key word is > "equivalent"). Robert Dewar of AdaCore claims to have a collection of equ= ivalent > Ada and C programs that produce identical object code using gcc. > > > 7. What advanced tutorial material is there for using Ada in this way? > > Say that I have Norman Cohen's _Ada as a Second Language_. What more > > advanced material is available on subjects other than concurrency, > > distributed processing, or real-time systems? On a related note, what > > projects would you recommend looking at as examples of great code? > > Cohen is a pretty good book; I'm not sure that you need anything else. No= te that > even small applications can sometimes benefit from concurrency. Since Ada > tasking is high-level and safe, it would a mistake not to learn about it = so you > can use it when warranted. Barne's book is a good choice. You might want = to look > at "Ada Distilled" by Richard Riehle. Again, adaic.org has a list of text= s and > tutorials. > > -- > Jeff Carter > "When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under it > while the first legion marched across. If programmers today > worked under similar ground rules, they might well find > themselves getting much more interested in Ada!" > Robert Dewar > 62 > > --- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to n...@netfron= t.net --- roman quote best this year!!! wow is ada really even awesome for web? watch out ruby!! as unix admin I love idea of safety and correctness...