From: dramirez@cs.uml.edu (Dr Amirez)
Subject: Re: Ada --> C Translation, was: Win CE target
Date: 1998/10/10
Date: 1998-10-11T01:36:49+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <6vp23h$hc3$1@jupiter.cs.uml.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: dale-1110980932270001@dale.ppp.cs.rmit.edu.au
In article <dale-1110980932270001@dale.ppp.cs.rmit.edu.au> dale@cs.rmit.edu.au (Dale Stanbrough) writes:
>Dr Amirez wrote:
>
>" Well, C didn't have exceptions for years and probably will never have it.
> That didn't keep it from being one of the most successful languages
> ever created. If you consider a feature rich language a better language
> then let me tell you this. I remember seeing a question on this forum
> that goes like this: "If a task blocks on I/O, do other tasks get a chance
> to run or the *process* will suspend itself, and no task will run
> until the process get scheduled again? "
> Someone responded that it's undefined. Well, I would think such
> an important feature should be very well defined instead of being
> left as an excercise for the user to find out how that is implemented
> on their systems. After all, isn't Ada intended to be a system
> programming language? You can't program systems using features that
> are system dependant themselves.
> The more features a language has, the more flaws it has. You, as an Ada
> programmer, probably know better than I".
>
>
>
>Ok, let's put your rather simplistic analysis to the test.
>
>An issue of Communications of the ACM tested a large number of Unix
>utilities (vi was one of them) to the test by feeding them with a stream
>of randomly produced characters. A very high proportion of the programs
>crashed (core dumped!).
Well, any software needs testing. Much of this is the fault of UNIX
vendors. I understand the bugs got reported times after times but
never got fixed. I can only think of one reason: patching one thing
will only make another problem emerge. That's sad. But then the time
for UNIX has passed, investing into fixing UNIX bugs isn't productive.
Then again, how many times does the ACM get a chance to test an OS
in Ada? Theoretically such an OS will be better than UNIX/NT/LINUX, but
you never know.
>
>This is from a simple language. Why did this happen? If it is such a
>simple language, surely by your logic, any program will be aok?
>
>
>Lets face reality. A language with more features may be harder to
>implement. There may be some flaws in the definition. But does it mean
>that the language can't be used to create reliable code? Certainly the
>opposite (a simple language will always produce good code) isn't true.
>What it really means is you have to analyze the features to see if they
>help you write better programs. Another recent article in Communications
>of the ACM had a discussion about all the terrible things that could
>happen in programs (it did a fault analysis of a large number of (C)
>programs). Guess what.. a large number of the _run time_ problems in
>these programs would have been _compile time_ problems in Ada.
How about I hate guessing. I will wait for a an Ada OS to come along.
Linux is (used to be anyway ) a one man project. Surely an OS can't be that
hard to build. Please leave AT&T out of this. They contribute greatly
to the Computer Sci community. Without them I would still be working
on some obscure system written in a mixture of FORTRAN, PL1 and assembly.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-10-10 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 40+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-09-20 0:00 Win CE target William A Whitaker
1998-09-20 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-09-21 0:00 ` dennison
1998-09-21 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-28 0:00 ` Ada --> C Translation, was: " Stefan Helfert
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-09-30 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-29 0:00 ` Robert A Duff
1998-10-10 0:00 ` Dr Amirez
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-10 0:00 ` Dr Amirez [this message]
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-11 0:00 ` Dr Amirez
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-13 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Niklas Holsti
1998-10-12 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-14 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-14 0:00 ` Andi Kleen
1998-10-12 0:00 ` PC
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Operating System in Ada (was Ada --> C Translation) Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-12 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Chris Morgan
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Dale Stanbrough
1998-10-14 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-10-12 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-10-13 0:00 ` dennison
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
1998-10-21 0:00 ` Van Snyder
1998-10-22 0:00 ` Tom Moran
1998-10-13 0:00 ` Ada --> C Translation, was: Win CE target Robert I. Eachus
1998-10-14 0:00 ` Samuel Mize
1998-10-16 0:00 ` Tasking/blocking system calls (was: Ada --> C Translation) Mats Weber
1998-09-20 0:00 ` Win CE target dewarr
1998-09-20 0:00 ` dewarr
1998-09-23 0:00 ` falis
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