Re: Future of Ada?

Re: Future of Ada?

[Matthew Heaney]

jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:

> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
> about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
> comments would be greatly appreciated.

You may be thinking of the US DoD's change in policy wrt contracting
software intensive systems.  Way back when, the government had a
putative rule that all software for weapons systems had to be written in
Ada.  This policy is sometimes refered to as the "Ada mandate."

However, the government is moving to an acquisition policy in which
software source language is but one factor in a systems engineering
study, and so Ada has, thankfully, been liberated from the mandate.

If you want more info about Ada, then here's a couple of sites you can
surf:

<http://www.adahome.com/>
<hhtp://www.adaic.org/>

I know adahome has a link containing myriad examples of companies that
use Ada.  One recent example is the Paris Metro: there's a new line or
something that uses control software all written in Ada.  Another
example is Boeing's new 777: the software is almost all Ada.

So the news about Ada's death has been greatly exaggerated.  Lots of
shops are using Ada, and not just for military apps.  (I'm working on an
electronic intellegence app right now, written in Ada83, and the next
release is going to be written in Ada95.)

You can try Ada for yourself.  gnat, a member of the gcc family, is a
zero-cost, high quality Ada95 compiler available for a variety of
platforms.  gdb is also fully ada-aware, as is emacs.

<http://www.gnat.com/>

A new version, 3.11p, should be out any day now.  ACT is just cleaning
up a few ends wrt the WinNT release.

I use gnat 3.10p on a Mac 7500/225, running Linux for powerpc.

<http://www.linuxppc.com/>
-- 
Those who believe in the supernatural should be required to learn
computer programming.  This would force them to discover that things
which appear at first to be completely mysterious and incomprehensible,
in fact have a logical (and usually simple) explanation.  --J.B.R. Yant

Re: Future of Ada?

[E. Robert Tisdale]

Jim wrote:

> I am just wondering what those who frequent
> this news group think about the future of Ada.
> I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of dying out
> and that not even the military is using it any more.
> Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

There is enormous resistance to Ada
in some high performance application domains
such as digital signal and image processing.
DARPA/ITO sponsored the VSIP Forum

        http://www.vsip.org/

to develop a standard API for
Vector, Signal and Image Processing libraries.
They have specified an ANSI C language binding
and may eventually specify bindings
for other high level programming languages
but there doesn't seem to be any interest
in doing so at this time.
There doesn't appear to be any pressure yet
from the US Navy for an Ada language binding
and I don't think that there ever will be.
Many of the safety features provided by Ada
are incorporated into VSIP library functions
at compile or link time as options.

Bob Tisdale, <edwin@netwood.net>

Re: Future of Ada?

[David Gillon]

Jim wrote:
>  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more. 

Has anyone spouting that kind of talk actually asked the military? I can
assure you there are plenty of military programs using Ada out there.
There's still no more appropriate language for safety critical or
mission critical apps, IMO.

-- 

David Gillon
MAv Rochester

Re: Future of Ada?

[Markus Kuhn]

jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:
|> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
|> about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
|> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
|> comments would be greatly appreciated.

Actually, the contrary is true. Ada is a quite nice language that has been
ignored outside military and avionics for a long time, purely because good
compilers were not easily available. With GNAT 3.11 reaching a high level
of maturity now and numerous libraries and bindings becoming available that
make GNAT not only a conforming Ada95 compiler but (much more important!)
also a comfortable and productive development environment that is
even accessible to poor students and academics, the interesting time
for Ada is just about to start. Java is too slow and too restrictive
for low-level programming, C++ is much too dangerous, and Eiffel is
much less widely supported. So Ada95 is currently becomming one of
the most interesting programming languages on the market, together
with the various rapid-prototyping scripting languages such as Python.

I believe that Ada95 is tremendously underhyped.

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

Re: Future of Ada?

[dennison]

In article <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu>,
  jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu wrote:
> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
> about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
> comments would be greatly appreciated.

Our Military customer required it for the job I'm on now. Its a simulation job
too, not a "warfighting" job.

I tend to hear the most of that same "talk" from folks who (for some bizzare
reason) desparately *want* it to be true.

T.E.D.

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Re: Future of Ada?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu>, jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:
> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
> about the future of Ada.

I find that hard to believe.

If you were _really_ interested, you would have gotten the answer already
by going to Deja News and reviewing the responses when this question has
been asked in the past (approximately monthly).

Larry Kilgallen

Future of Ada?

[Jim]

I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
comments would be greatly appreciated.

	-Jim

Re: Future of Ada?

[Jim]

On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 13:56:08 GMT, kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry
Kilgallen) wrote:

>In article <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu>, jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:
>> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
>> about the future of Ada.
>
>I find that hard to believe.
>
>If you were _really_ interested, you would have gotten the answer already
>by going to Deja News and reviewing the responses when this question has
>been asked in the past (approximately monthly).
>
>Larry Kilgallen

You find my legitamate interest in what a few people here think about
the future of Ada hard to believe?  Why?  You assume I've never been
to Deja News and that the people here in this news group don't have an
opinion that might interest me.  It was a simple question, and if you
don't want to bother to answer it please don't question my interest in
the subject.

	-Jim

Re: Future of Ada?

[Jim]

Matthew,
Thank you very much for an intelligent and informative response.

	-Jim

On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 18:18:19 GMT, Matthew Heaney
<matthew_heaney@acm.org> wrote:

>jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:
>
>> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
>> about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
>> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
>> comments would be greatly appreciated.
>
>You may be thinking of the US DoD's change in policy wrt contracting
>software intensive systems.  Way back when, the government had a
>putative rule that all software for weapons systems had to be written in
>Ada.  This policy is sometimes refered to as the "Ada mandate."
>
>However, the government is moving to
<the rest snipped>

Re: Future of Ada?

[Jeff Schweiger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1554 bytes --]

I'd never looked at VSIP before reading this posting.  It appears to be
a long-range R&D effort years away from actually being included in
operational weapons systems acquisition.  I don't know what their Ada
plans are, but expect that they are not representative of Navy software
development as a whole.  I do know that for many Navy applications,
especially in the precision guided munitions arena, there is
considerable use of Ada.

Jeff Schweiger

"E. Robert Tisdale" wrote:

> Jim wrote:
>
> > I am just wondering what those who frequent
> > this news group think about the future of Ada.
> > I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of dying out
> > and that not even the military is using it any more.
> > Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
>
> There is enormous resistance to Ada
> in some high performance application domains
> such as digital signal and image processing.
> DARPA/ITO sponsored the VSIP Forum
>
>         http://www.vsip.org/
>
> to develop a standard API for
> Vector, Signal and Image Processing libraries.
> They have specified an ANSI C language binding
> and may eventually specify bindings
> for other high level programming languages
> but there doesn't seem to be any interest
> in doing so at this time.
> There doesn't appear to be any pressure yet
> from the US Navy for an Ada language binding
> and I don't think that there ever will be.
> Many of the safety features provided by Ada
> are incorporated into VSIP library functions
> at compile or link time as options.
>
> Bob Tisdale, <edwin@netwood.net>

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Re: Status of GNAT 3.11p

[Markus Kuhn]

In article <m3iuebji2a.fsf@fred.muc.de>, Andi Kleen <ak-uu@muc.de> writes:
|> > I believe that Ada95 is tremendously underhyped.
|> And I think gnat 3.11p is overhyped. Where is it?

I have it already installed for Linux as a final beta tester
and it works very nice. The 3.11p Linux version seems to have
been ready for a long time but for some reason ACT do not want
to publish it before they have completed the NT version.

I had to promise not to pass on my beta version, so don't ask me
for it, but may be ACT can be convinced to do a short public beta
test for the 3.11p Linux version until they have fixed their NT
problems. It seems their main concern is a proliferation of too
many different 3.11p versions that could result of a public beta
test. I never understood this concern, because it is trivial
to just call them gnat-3.11p-beta-990114.tar.gz or something
like that for the beta test version of the day. Should be no
problem if they use a decent revision control concept.
Beta testers by definition do not mind anyway to install a
new revision every morning.

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

Re: Status of GNAT 3.11p

[dewar]

In article <77kjlm$bri$3@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
  mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) wrote:
> I have it already installed for Linux as a final beta
> tester and it works very nice. The 3.11p Linux version
> seems to have been ready for a long time but for some
> reason ACT do not want to publish it before they have
> completed the NT version.

Actually not really a long time, but rather what we
consider a reasonable beta test period. Our past experience
shows that once a version is out, it tends to proliferate
very fast, and so we wanted to wait for Markus and others
to report in, and indeed the fact that Markus says "it
works very nice" is just the kind of report we have been
waiting for (Markus reported in very promptly, thankyou,
Markus, some of the other testers needed a bit more time
:-)

We do want to release all the versions together, otherwise
we get lots of complaints about where is the xxx version

> I had to promise not to pass on my beta version, so don't
> ask me for it.

Just to be clear, we did not ask for such a promise (to do
so would be a violation of the GPL). We did tell Markus
that we prefer that he not distribute that version, and we
appreciate that he respects that wish, because if it did
have glitches then we definitely don't want a proliferation
of slightly different versions. The final 3.11p is
virtually identical to what Markus tested.

> but may be ACT can be convinced to do a short public beta
> test for the 3.11p Linux version until they have fixed
> their NT problems.

Well I am not sure there is such a think as a public beta
test, once a version is out, it is out, and there will be
thousands of copies of it around for ever :-)

But in any case, the beta testing for the 3.11p Linux
version is completed, and as I noted earlier today, will
be out early next week.

> It seems their main concern is a proliferation of too
> many different 3.11p versions that could result of a
> public beta test. I never understood this concern,
> because it is trivial to just call them
> gnat-3.11p-beta-990114.tar.gz or something
> like that for the beta test version of the day. Should be
> no problem if they use a decent revision control concept.
> Beta testers by definition do not mind anyway to install
> a new revision every morning.

Well yes, in the ideal world :-)

But in the real world, once a public version is out it is
really out. Mike Feldman puts it on the CD ROM for his book
(which is great by the way), it is on dozens of FTP sites
next day, and on thousands of machines the following day.
Such is the wonder of the internet.

You are right that beta testers should regard a beta
version as a test version, but in practice, there is not
much distinction made by 99.99% of users, it is simply the
latest (and therefore greatest?) version.

Anyway, this debate can be left moot for now, the Linux
version as well as many other versions will be out next
week with sources.

Markus is planning to setup a forum for interchange on the
Linux version, and we will be happy to work with him on
this, and for example contribute critical patches for
important bugs.

We are also contributing the 3.11p front end to the EGCS
project, with the hope that it can be intergrated into the
EGCS distribution. This will take a little bit of fiddling
but it should be basically fairly straightforward to mate
the GNAT front end with EGCS, since nearly all the critical
bug fixes and patches to gcc to make GNAT work properly
have already been picked up by EGCS.

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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Re: Status of GNAT 3.11p

[dewar]

In article <77kjlm$bri$3@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
  mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) wrote:
> In article <m3iuebji2a.fsf@fred.muc.de>, Andi Kleen
> <ak-uu@muc.de> writes:
> |> > I believe that Ada95 is tremendously underhyped.
> |> And I think gnat 3.11p is overhyped. Where is it?

By the way, I think you can understand from this comment
why we are generally reluctant to give estimated time
schedules and other roadmaps for GNAT public releases :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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Re: Future of Ada?

[Kevin]

In article <77hsi5$oa4$1@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>, mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk says...
>
>jamwahl@badlands.nodak.edu (Jim) writes:
>|> I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
>|> about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
>|> dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
>|> comments would be greatly appreciated.
>

I have used Ada95 (GNAT) to write a commerical (non miltary) program for
a customer just recently.

When I was asked to write the program, we did not talk about which language
to use. So I went ahead and used Ada.

I finished the program ahead of time, and still get email about the high
quality of the program and they are amazed that so far it did not crash
and there are no bugs. When they ask me what is language I used, I do 
not say Ada (I am afraid they might not ask me to do more program for them if
I did, I know this sounds sad, but this is the state of the computer
industry we are in, managers want to hear you say Java or C++ since that
is all they hear about), so I  just said it is GNAT, a compiler that can 
be downloaded from the  net, and shrug it off. (they think it is some sort 
of C/C++ compiler I guess :) . I am glad the customer is not a programmer!

If I get another chance to write a program for this customer, I'll use 
Ada again.

Kevin

Re: Future of Ada?

[news.oxy.com]

Jim wrote in message <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu>...
>I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
>about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
>dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
>comments would be greatly appreciated.
>
> -Jim

Hi from Russia.


This reply is also  well suited for other dicussion thread  (Ada vs C++ vs
Java) .

As a matter of fact ADA recently has been adopted as  NATO programming
language standard (look at the end of the message ).
Believe me such kind of decisions are not taken easily and  just because
some top level people like ADA more than other languages but because it is
better suited for very complex real world and real time and embedded systems
(as ADA was designed for that and proved it).

I think that problem is that a lot of people do not try to look at the roots
(or essence) of things and just follow the easy way of living (just doing
what they have been taught and not trying to grasp new ideas, concepts
etc.). For many people (including programmers)  it is difficult to strain
themselves. It is easy to relax and do what is easier to do and just to
repeat what  other people say.

Now when good ADA95 compilers become available along with GUI tools (e.g.
CLAW from RR Software) and useful ADA libraries as well as ADA binding
(thick and thin)  to other language libraries ADA95 is at the starting point
for rapidly gaining popularity.
I think that  GNAT 3.11p  from ACT is such a starting point (it should be
soon publicly available).

My opinion that right now the best choices is ADA95 and combination of ADA95
and Java when appropriate (ADA95 being used for core systems and Java code
used for getting access to such core systems via Internet from any PC with
browser).  It proved to be that ADA95 and Java perfectly suits each other in
this area as now it is possible to generate Java class code directly from
ADA95 program and there exists bindings to Java for ADA95 (Averstar). This
option probably will be included in some future releases of ADA95 compiler
from ACT (according to ACT).

Pretty  soon there will be more ADA bindings and ADA libraries in addition
to existing ones.

My opinion that right now the best choices is ADA95 and combination of ADA95
and Java when appropriate (ADA95 being used for core system and Java code
used for getting access to such core system via Internet from any PC with
browser).  It proved to be that ADA95 and Java perfectly suits each other in
this area as now it is possible to generate Java class code directly from
ADA95 program and there exists bindings to Java for ADA95 (from Averstar).
This option should be included in some future releases of ADA95 compiler
from ACT (according to ACT).

Probably soon there will be more ADA bindings and ADA libraries in addition
to existing ones.

I wonder if anyone (professional  ADA programmers  and ADA software
Companies)   try to write ADA95  bindings (WindowsNT)   to ACE real time
communication subsystem  as well as TAO implemented in C and C++ by Douglas
C. Schmidt at Washington University in St. Louis
http://siesta.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/ ) or even implement it totally in
ADA95. This will be invaluable investment to ADA community. I know that this
is underway for Linux but I do not know anyone who is doing that for Windows
NT.

I consider this as a challenge to:
    Robert Dewar Ada Core Technologies,
    Tucker Taft   stt@averstar.com   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
    Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK,
    Marin David Condic, Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems
Analysis
    and other professionals in ADA.
------------------------------------

I am communication engineer that have been working in space industry for 13
years being involved in  Mir Space Orbit Station project ,Souz projects etc.
taking part in development of onboard  communication and control systems as
well as test equipment for that systems.
Since beginning of 1993  I've been  working as communication specialist in
American Company (Occidental Oil an Gas  www.oxy.com) in Russia (satellite
communications, data communications [frame relay, TCP/IP networks ], Nortel
Meridian1 switches, etc.).

I think that this prove that I am not a person which is interested in
promoting particular programming language. I am just a person who is
interested in having such kind of programming language and associated set of
tools that best suited for developing complex systems and my opinions stems
from my experience.

To say more though I am not a professional programmers but I have been doing
programming in many languages (DEC PDP-11 Assembler, x86 Assembler, Pascal,
Modula-2 (DEC PDP-11 implementation),  TopSpeed Modula-2,
Borland Delphi, Borland Paradox Object PAL (Accounting software to process
Nortel Meridian 1 PBX CDR data). I have been experimenting with C, C++ (to
understand what they are up to),Prolog, Modula-3.
I was studying OOP paradigms using C++ when ADA95 was not available.

One of the important things in software developing and maintenance is
readability of the code. ADA95 is the best in this matter. Anyone who knows
English can read and understand Ada code and this  is quite the opposite to
C and C++ no matter what C and C++ programmers claim.  This means that any
new person can easily be included in development/maintenance team  and can
easily understand what have been done so far. For long term projects this is
extremely important.

Also if it is necessary to deal with something that should be more efficient
(to programmer's view) the best choice is  to use small subprograms and
function written in assembler and call them from ADA code.
Assembler is not more difficult to read than C and C++  let alone code
efficiency.


Vladimir Olensky (Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
Telecommunication specialist,
Occidental C.I.S. Services, Inc. ( www.oxy.com ).
Russia,
Moscow.



****************************************************************************
*********************

                                             STANAG 3912
                                             (Edition 3)

      NAVY/ARMY/AIR
                   NATO STANDARDIZATION AGREEMENT
                              (STANAG)
                Ada - REAL-TIME HIGH ORDER COMPUTER
                       PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Related Documents:  ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A                    ISO/IEC
8652:1995(E)

AIM1.  The aim of this agreement is to achieve easier
      development, improved maintenance and a decrease in life cycle
      costs of avionic systems, by using a standardized real-time,
      high order, computer programming language.AGREEMENT

2.  Participating nations agree:
    a.   To use the high order programming language Ada 95
         for programming avionics software in future avionics
         acquisitions.  Ada 95 is defined by ISO/IEC
         8652:1995(E).  Participants may continue to use
         Ada 83 as defined by ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A for systems
         already in production or in service where the cost
         to migrate to Ada 95 is prohibitive.
    b.   That future avionics systems will employ this
         standard when consistent with system requirements
         and constraints as determined through an acceptable
         systems engineering process.IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AGREEMENT

3.  This STANAG is implemented when a nation has issued
instructions that applications will be in accordance with thisagreement.

Implementing countries currently are:BE, CA, FR, GE, NL, NO, TU, UK

Promulgated on 11 September 1997

Re: Future of Ada?

[Kirk]

In article <36A4A29D.3E6D@jhuapl.edu>, Rush says...
>
 
>
>Prior to Ada'95, Ada was handicapped by a "closed" view of application
>development.  By that I mean, the presumption was that the entire
>application would be developed in Ada & that Ada bindings would be
>available to the operating system services. 

but this is exactly the case with Java now.

yet, java has became very popular.

so ?

The reason is simple. the industry has accepted java even though it is
closed system for the most part. binding to other outside systems were
written quickly and by everyone. example, go to oracle website, you
can download a java driver to oracle database. same with sybase, etc..

I dont think the problem that Ada was closed. it must be something else.

Kirk.
 

Re: Future of Ada?

[Paul Whittington]

Kirk wrote:

> ... it must be something else.

Yes it is something else.

Billions in marketing :)

-- 
Paul Whittington
GrepNet, Inc.
(208)523-7375
paul@grep.net

"Even if you're on the right track you'll get
 run over if you stand still."

Will Rogers

Re: Future of Ada?

[Rush Kester]

news.oxy.com wrote:
> 
> Jim wrote in message <369c6b78.7488219@news.nodak.edu>...
> >I am just wondering what those who frequent this news group think
> >about the future of Ada.  I've heard a lot of talk that Ada is kind of
> >dying out and that not even the military is using it any more.  Any
> >comments would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > -Jim

I have developed software professionally in COBOL, Fortran, Assembler,
Pascal, and Ada.  Ada is by far the most powerful higher level
language.   It was easier to develop applications in Ada (without
resorting to assembler language helper routines).  It was also easier to
reuse Ada code.  While it not easy to develop reusable code in any
language, in Ada, the extra time spent specifing the interfaces and
parameterizing software for reuse, paid big dividends.  My research and
experience at the Software Engineering Laboratory at NASA Goddard showed
that reuse (both without changes, and requiring modifications) increased
with Ada versus Fortran or C/C++.  See
http://sel.gsfc.nasa.gov/doc-st/docs.htm and in particular "Impact of
Ada and Object-Oriented Design in the Flight Dynamics Division at
NASA/GSFC," (http://sel.gsfc.nasa.gov/doc-st/docs/95-001.pdf).

Prior to Ada'95, Ada was handicapped by a "closed" view of application
development.  By that I mean, the presumption was that the entire
application would be developed in Ada & that Ada bindings would be
available to the operating system services.  Ada'95 made it much easier
to develop mixed language applications and to link to existing API
libraries (written in other languages).  Another handicap, prior to the
Ada'9x effort was the high cost of Ada compilers and tools.  Now there
are free compilers available (GNAT, and ObjectAda).  The recently ISO
approved Ada Semantic Interface Specification (ASIS) makes developing
powerful and portable tools easy.

My only concern is not with the technology or infrastructure, but with
overcoming prejudices from Ada's origin's with U.S. Dept. of Defense and
attaining critical mass in broader markets.  Contray to what Jim has
heard, the U.S. Military still uses lots of programming languages,
including Ada (even though it's use is no longer "mandated.")

-- 
Rush Kester
Software System Engineer
at Johns Hopkins Univ./Applied Physics Lab.
voice: (240) 228-3030 (M-F 9am to 5pm EST)