Re: Java Out, Linux In

[chris@nospam.com]

Yes, Linux is cool.

GNAT + Linux are even more cool.

I wish someone would take more leadership role for GNAT+Linux to put more
effort and money into this combination.

Linux will be a very hot thing in the commig years. Java on Linux is
still weak compared to Java on windows. This is a window for Ada to
jump in on the Linux platform as a vehicle to make Ada more popular
with all those thousands of programmers who are writing software for Linux
every day. Ada on windows will never make it (you can't make those VB
programmers think in terms of abstration and interfaces). Ada on Unix 
and on Linux in particular have a much better chance just becuase that
environment is not polluted by the MS culture.

What we need is something like Sun is doing for Java. We need a fully
integrated  GNAT+libraries Linux package/distro that will knock
the JDK+its API out.

The only reason I see Java as popular is not becuase the language is
so great, (although it is much better than C and C++ for sure) but 
becuase JDK comes with zillion API to do almost anything
you want. From sending email, to playing sound to 2D to 3D to GUI, 
if it can be done, it seems java has an API for it. soon Sun will 
make an API to let java cook for you also. You can not help but be
very impressed by the Java API's.

Without doing something soon, Ada will be dead folks. wake up. we need
to do something. I see some Ada people wasting efforts on re-inventing
the wheel by duplicating efforts, trying to build new OS in Ada and
make yet another linked list.

What is needed are usefull practical Ada packages that people in the
commerical world can use today, something like an Ada package for 
SNMP (reading snmp pkts, parsing it, BER encoding, support for snmpv1, 
v2c etc..) or an Ada package for XML (Java is big hear, Sun has an XML 
package part of JDK allready). (I am thinking of writing an Ada package
for SNMP, since that sounds like a fun thing to do and can be very
usefull, but I need to check to see may be someone did that allready ;)

Of course, when jGNAT do come out and be public, and one can
use Ada to call any of those Java classes, it will make Ada very popular
to use also. 

Chris.