Re: Web Development Using Ada?

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

On Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:49:11 AM UTC-6, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
> I think Ada could offer something there:
> 
> 1. Direct portability without virtualization;
> 2. Control over the resources. In Ada the server can be designed in a way
> that it would require minimal or no dynamic memory allocation;
> 3. Much better performance when Ada's approach to tasking is used;
> 4. Less debugging.

Other positives (note that my stint in professional web-programming was using PHP):

5. Generics -- I had to write the same function again and again (slightly different because of the 'types' coming in) when using PHP; that system would have been a lot nicer and more stable if PHP had generics.

6. Packages -- I really missed packages when I was using PHP; you don't realize how NICE it is to be able to group types and operations together (all checked and verified to be syntactically correct) until you have to go without, and doubly so f the thing you're working on only has the equivalent of #include.

7. Records -- It's _nice_ to be able to define a set of data to map the various components you're working with which are logically grouped. {In PHP you can "kind of" simulate records with string-associative arrays.}

8. Types and Subtypes -- You quickly learn how valuable these (and CONSTRAINT_ERROR) are when you spend hours tracking down a bug that happens to ultimately be an out-of-range error.

9. Superior documentation compared to PHP. (Seriously, PHP's documentation is a little snippet describing a function and then MESSAGEBOARDS for elaboration... and often you'll find horrible solutions to problems therein.)

10. Sane FOR loop. -- In PHP it's easy to write a set of foreach loops where the second loop repeats the penultimate item twice and ignores the last item... and they consider it "intended behavior." (Ew!)

> Negative could be:
> 
> 1. Culture shock programmers experience when have to face Ada;
> 2. Lack of tools;
> 3. Tiny community;
> 4. GNAT monopoly.

Negatives (again, assuming you're comparing to PHP):
5. *SLOW* initial development. (In PHP you can instantly put things to the output; mostly because there's *almost* no correctness checking.)
6. AWS setup on Windows. (Assuming you're going to use AWS on Windows, you *HAVE* to use the GNU toolchain [i.e. make et al.] and it has some serious issues regarding a particular file [zlib IIRC])