Best for small embedded systems - was RE:ada and robots

[WhiteR@no.spam.please.CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US (Robert S. White)]

In article <97060510492534@psavax.pwfl.com>, condicma@PWFL.COM says...
>
...
>    Before I start my tirade, let me preface by saying that I *like*
>    Ada and prefer Ada to C. I 'reach', I'm 'of the body', Resistance
>    was futile: I have been absorbed, I am part of The Borg, etc. But
>    that doesn't mean there aren't some valid criticisms of Ada or
>    times when C is more appropriate.
>
>    I believe when the original poster was discussing this issue, it
>    was about small, inexpensive microcontrollers for robotics. I've
...
>
>    The embedded microcontroller market seems to have been conceeded
>    to C for the time being and, especially for student projects,
>    small development jobs and quick&dirty fixes, I'd recommend not
>    spitting into the wind. (You certainly can't argue that life cycle
...
 
  I tend to agree, with the exception that there are a lot of Forth 
users/usages for small, resource constrained, embedded applications.  
You can't beat the memory efficiency.  Difficult to get up to speed 
and be able to _think_ in Forth, but once you do a lone wolf 
programmer can be very very productive (with his personal Forth 
vocabulary of reuseable code).

  But for those medium to large (with a lot of floating point) 
embedded applications which involve team programming Ada seems, IMHO, 
to work best.  Also it tends to be much easier to maintain when 
revisited by new personnel years later.

_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer