Re: AuroraUX Combines SunOS with Ada

[anon@anon.org (anon)]

No virtual machine! All VM are only as good as the host OS.  And if a problem 
exist in the host OS then those errors will be magnified in the VM. And a true 
Ada OS would never work in a VM environment, the Ada OS must be the 
"New Law Giver". The only VM that would be allowed is for processor sizing 
programs, such as 16, 32, 64, 128 and may be even 256 bit programs.

Now, the main reason the same weakness exist in future version of a language
is from the maintainer believing the error is in the host OS instead of the 
language. And in some cases a maintainer may have a limited focus to fix 
such weakness.

As for picking on C, that because most OS and system developers, today use 
C. But other languages like Pascal were also used to create a 100% language 
OS. TI created the DX10 OS using 100% Pascal back in the 1980s for the 
TI-990 mini and micro computers. The DX10 was used throughout the life of 
that TI-990 series.  One of the funnier problems was that any Pascal program 
running under the DX10 system, dominated (non-preemptive) the system 
resources over other non-Pascal programs. Compile a student Pascal program 
and shutdown all other non-Pascal code.
                       
And if you do a little studying you will see that almost every language 
including COBOL has been used for a 100% language version OS.  Should Ada 
be denied the respect to try to prove itself for using 100% language OS? 
The answer is "NO"!

And in ever case, where a single language like Pascal, C, JAVA or etc. was 
used to create an OS they have failed.  One reason might be due to the nature 
of the language itself.  Like Pascal was created for an educational language 
to teach programming, it was never intended to be use for anything else. C 
was created in 1972 for a general purpose language for the 3 year old AT&T 
"unix".  It was never created to be used as a system language, even though 
most programmers today still use C for their system language. And other 
languages like COBOL and FORTRAN were never meant to be use to create 
an OS but there are OSs based on those languages. And in each case, some 
of the errors that are embedded in the OS can be linked to some of weakness 
in the language they were written in.  

One weakness of these language based OS is the needs to operate in a safe 
mission critical matter.  The only language that has that attribute built-in is 
"Ada". So, why 100% Ada, well injecting other languages like C, or Pascal 
could prevent the OS from being a true safe mission critical OS. And just 
converting programs or projects to Ada mean that the safe mission critical 
design can not be guarantee either because it might be the API that is not 
secure.

So, now why are you so against using 100% Ada to building an OS.

Just Food for thought!

Everybody knows that the new "Windows 7" will not be prefect. But are the 
errors embedded so that Microsoft can come out with the next OS version in 3 
years. Or has Microsoft been too cheap in hiring it labor force (programmers 
and testers) to create the new "Windows 7". Or will you find some of the 
fault in the languages that Microsoft used in building "Windows 7".  Only 
time will tell us! Plus, the first reason is illegal.


In <gph7gh$dmm$1@octagram.motzarella.org>, Ivan Levashew <octagram@bluebottle.com> writes:
>anon wrote:
>> 
>> Why 100% Ada. A 100% Ada could prove the strengths of Ada and its 
>> weaknesses.
>
>So you insist on Ada virtual machine?
>
>> Then the weaknesses could be fixed in the next specs.
>
>Some weaknesses are indeniable blockers.
>
>> But without 100% Ada some of those weaknesses will be passed to the next 
>> specification and beyond.
>
>That's OK. Every weakness is often strength from another side. There is
>no silver bullet.
>
>Every strength can be roughly classified as either synthesis or analysis
>strength. The reality is so that S and A ones are mutually exclusive.
>You can't catch both at the same time (although you can easily miss both
>at the same time :)). Linear equations are easy to solve and analyze,
>but they are linear. You can't easily solve arbitrary equations.
>Analysis requires restricting synthesis and vice versa.
>
>In IT world, demands are diverse and in order to fullfill them,
>information systems are layered, with synthetic properties increasing
>and analytic properties decreasing on each layer.
>
>Ada has several restricted profiles and restricting tools (AdaControl,
>SPARK) that give it opportunity to reside into inner(analytical) layers,
>but building a cool OS also requires synthetic properties not present in
>Ada. 100% Ada makes no sense.
>
>> created by "Dmitry Kazakov" have
>
>Usenet is not bash. Disaster won't happen if you omit quotes around
>names here.
>
>> Also, as for "XPCOM, GLib, NSObject".  Those are old school!
>
>Given the same circumstances and the same goals, people are likely to
>produce the same solutions.
>
>What is new school then? "100% Ada" says nothing about the approach it
>is gonna be implemented.
>
>> A lot of C project are created, violates the Ada RM, which gives one
>> reason they should be no mix language support in this OS.
>
>Let C go alone. What about Free Pascal, Cyclone, Limbo etc. developers?
>Do you want to shut the door for them? Why?
>
>-- 
>If you want to get to the top, you have to start at the bottom