From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,4cb1f8d1c17d39a8 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.35.68 with SMTP id f4mr8966787pbj.5.1319974797548; Sun, 30 Oct 2011 04:39:57 -0700 (PDT) Path: p6ni33504pbn.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.flashnewsgroups.com-b7.4zTQh5tI3A!not-for-mail From: Stephen Leake Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada 'hello world' for Android; success! References: Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 07:38:35 -0400 Message-ID: <82ipn6ogjo.fsf@stephe-leake.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:MXMZlz2dIbLisFKYNvI3JqoP2i8= MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Complaints-To: abuse@flashnewsgroups.com Organization: FlashNewsgroups.com X-Trace: 71cfc4ead3734e26b0fa609264 Xref: news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:14249 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: 2011-10-30T07:38:35-04:00 List-Id: tmoran@acm.org writes: >> I'd have thought it was more a problem of the bindings being thin? > The original Petzold "Programming Windows" book shows a "Hello, Windows!" > program - it's two pages long. Thick bindings like Claw, and "languages" > like Python, and of course personal libraries, are what made it practical > to code for Windows. Ah, I remember those days :). That's why I started Windex. >> Making thick bindings to a moving target is quite a challenge, of course. > In successive versions of the Google Earth API, they changed one > parameter of a function (GetPointOnTerrainFromScreenCoords) from a pointer > to a safearray to a pointer to a terrain point. That may be aesthetically > nicer, but it breaks existing code. I'm told that in one version of the > Android OS angles are clockwise from North while in another version they > are counterclockwise from East. Google's software is not a very solid > foundation on which to build a binding. Or any app, apparently. This is scary! Windex died in part because Microsoft kept changing the API, and I didn't have the man-hours to keep up with them. At least with jvm2ada and a strongly typed language on both sides, we automatically learn of any API changes that are visible in the types. That's a big step forward from the Windex days. Changes in behavior are another problem. -- -- Stephe