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: f891f,9d58048b8113c00f X-Google-Attributes: gidf891f,public X-Google-Thread: 10261c,2e71cf22768a124d X-Google-Attributes: gid10261c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,2e71cf22768a124d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,9d58048b8113c00f X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: ucaa2385@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de (Peter Hermann) Subject: Re: next "big" language?? (disagree) Date: 1996/06/04 Message-ID: <4p23oe$3f1e@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 158473020 distribution: world references: <4p0fdd$4ml@news.atlantic.net> <4p1l65$35qi@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> followup-to: comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.ada organization: Comp.Center (RUS), U of Stuttgart, FRG newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-06-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: The Amorphous Mass (robinson@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu) wrote: [snip] : I think you're assuming that everyone is deveoping a huge, complex : project with 100 teams of 100 programmers each working on mainframes with : 350MHz Alphas and 256MB of RAM (OK, I'm exaggerating a little :-). Those not at all. My home PC is a 486 which I recently upgraded from 8 to 24MB RAM. The reason was an application which steadily grew complex. (btw, a simple DOS application, but very useful ;-) ). The 8MB were fine for GNAT (the GNU Ada95 translator) as long as I did not use excessive generic abstraction. However, with the need of dynamically requested space during compilation of a demanding logical architecture, the 8MB did not satisfy the compilation process. The size is NOT in terms of lines of code. A few keystrokes for a coding-abstraction generates temp space for the compilation process. The result is an executable of a few KILObytes, where the compiler has done all optimization before. ;-) : of us lone programmers who put speed and space at a premium are willing : to go hunting for stray pointers as a necessary cost of using a small, : fast language. I better leave this hunting to a compiler. (btw: the pointer concept in Ada does not allow dangling pointers) :Besides, Ada is not the only big, safe, feature-laden, industrial-strength Ada is not big, safe, feature-laden, but industrial-strength and shaped with that minimum of features to compete as a general purpose object-oriented language (with concurrency and real-time capability). : language out there. So obviously there are people who would agree : wholeheartedly with your argument, but who would then disagree that Ada : would be the best language to use for "professional" programming. The : nature of that disagreement is, of course, subjective. James, you will certainly agree that a state-of-the-art PC sold today will have a minimum of 16MB/800MB/80MHz, don't you? This is much larger than needed for the free GNAT3.04 which simply requires 12MB(ram)/20MB(disk) space. The idea is: Developing on a commonly used PC or workstation and cross-compiling to a target e.g. an embedded system, small computer, or even an 8051 field processor. The developer has the flavor of object-orientedness, genericity, etc. and the executable will easily fit into a heart pacer, if needed. To come to an end: One of the great potentials of the future are reusable software elements. -- Peter Hermann Tel:+49-711-685-3611 Fax:3758 ph@csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de Pfaffenwaldring 27, 70569 Stuttgart Uni Computeranwendungen Team Ada: "C'mon people let the world begin" (Paul McCartney)