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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,fec75f150a0d78f5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public From: kcline@sun132.spd.dsccc.com (Kevin Cline) Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada Date: 1996/03/28 Message-ID: <4jeel1$erh@tpd.dsccc.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 144688286 references: <4iupk7$5t4@tpd.dsccc.com> <31582A63.4BE9@east.thomsoft.com> organization: DSC Communications Corporation Switch Products Division newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.edu Date: 1996-03-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <31582A63.4BE9@east.thomsoft.com>, Ed Falis wrote: >Jon S Anthony wrote: >> >> In article <4iupk7$5t4@tpd.dsccc.com> kcline@sun132.spd.dsccc.com (Kevin Cline) writes: >> >> > BTW, what architectures does ObjectAda support, and will ObjectAda >> > code compile largely unmodified with Gnat, and vice versa? >> >> A Thompson guy could better answer this. I would be surprised >> if Gnat and ObjectAda didn't compile things with little or no >> modification. Heck, I've taken large chuncks of VAX Ada and moved >> them to Gnat with no changes. Of course, these did not have any >> OS specific stuff in them. >> > >Well, I'll give it a shot. This year, it'll be Wintel, PowerPC/Win NT, >Sun/Solaris, HP-UX and (I believe) PowerPC/AIX. We also expect Wintel >cross to 32 bit X86 this year. Various PowerPC and 68K cross early next >year. > Well, that means that today's ObjectAda would not solve my 1993 problem: writing a Motif application for SunOS 4.1.3, Solaris, and SGI IRIX. Some of you may be asking "Why did you use Ada given all these problems?" I used it because my DoD customer wanted me to. >My experience so far is that the ability to cross compile code developed >on GNAT or ObjectAda is pretty good - the main issues are in a couple of >areas: ... availability of identical bindings This problem alone is enough to disqualify Ada for development of medium-sized UNIX applications. Admittedly, until POSIX all UNIX systems appeared to be slightly different, even to C/C++ applications, but the differences were relatively minor, well known, and easily worked around. Different Ada bindings tend to (say) UNIX tend to be radically different and much more work is required to translate from one binding to another. -- Kevin Cline