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: 103376,33e793a459e66944 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: What is Ada used for??? Date: 1996/10/15 Message-ID: <53vh41$2n2$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 189509161 references: organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia nntp-posting-user: ok newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-15T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Sean Roehnelt" writes: >Can I use Ada to make application for > Windows, Yes. Win 3.x, Win 95, Win NT, DOS > MocOS, MacOS? Yes. (GNAT + MachTen). > OS2, OS/2? Yes. > UNIX, Yes. > BeOS, Don't know, haven't got any here. > etc...? Yes for OpenVMS, and for some IBM operating systems, and a lot of things you've never heard of. > Does GUI bring up a whole other issue that ties me to a language? There is *one* and only one *popular* language around which has a de-facto-standard multiplatform GUI library, and that's Java. Since there are Ada->Java-code compilers available, there is no limitation on Ada _there_. There are multiplatform-but-not-de-facto-standard GUI libraries for C and C++: wxWindows and Garnet spring to mind Lisp and Scheme: wxWindows and Garnet sprint to mind and there is a GUI toolkit called "Tk" which is accessible from many languages including C, C++, CAML, Scheme (Stk), _and Ada_. In any case, a well-structured program will devote a fairly small fraction of its code to platform-specific GUI operations, and you can write 5% of your program in C and the other 95% in Ada, if you want to. >Is the programming language I program in independent of what programs can >be used for? Does it depend on my development package? What do you mean "development _package_"? Some so-called Interactive Development Environments tie you to a specific language, although it is worth noting that not all are. Some languages are good for writing device drivers (low level system specific hackery). Some languages are good for writing business software that must deal with formatted files and big numbers. Some languages are good for distributed programming. Some languages are good for parallel and concurrent programming. Some languages are good at object orientation. Some languages are good at non-object-oriented styles. Ada is good for all of them! -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.