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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: border1.nntp.ams.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!news.wtal.de!news.tal.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Heartbleed Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2014 01:16:58 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <87ha5q1b4l.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <1ljwj8f.1wqbhvuabsdw1N%csampson@inetworld.net> <51c7d6d4-e3be-44d5-a4ce-f7e875345588@googlegroups.com> <%J32v.70539$kp1.45343@fx14.iad> <87tx9so50m.fsf@adaheads.sparre-andersen.dk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: individual.net 9uWExCftMgnULRXgDWbALgu4/asQGhLh7FrP71n7xtYAZn/vkz Cancel-Lock: sha1:NDJjYTU1OTBkZTQwMDZhMzZkYzkwODFjNTg0OTFhMzUwZjZmYThmOQ== sha1:ocheN9ObaQYrvgru4W9muEnb+1U= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Xref: number.nntp.dca.giganews.com comp.lang.ada:185833 Date: 2014-04-19T01:16:58+02:00 List-Id: "Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" writes: > That's because an Ada compiler is far more complex to design. This may > be another rational for a standard Ada minimal *frozen* *subset* (not > a new language) without every thing which is finally a derived form of > the most fundamental constructs with additional limitations. This rational could have been valid 20 years or 30 years ago, when proprietary software was more common, and free software was less numerous and of more difficult access. Also, at a time, when a full Ada compiler would take 90% of the usual computer RAM, and 12 floppies. At the same time, the first C compiler for Macintosh took only 2 floppies. And 30 years ago there were tens of different processors, and hundreds of different OSes, which made it very difficult to provide a compiler running everywhere. BUT not anymore. Nowadays, you type apt-get install gcc or apt-get install gnat and the compiler is fetched from the Internet, and it doesn't make a difference if it takes 8 MB or 80 MB. Nowadays, there are only two processors: Intel on desktop and ARM on mobile, and there remains only ONE system: Unix (Linux on desktop Linux and Android, Darwin (BSD) on desktop MacOSX and iOS). And user machines have gigabytes of RAM and terabytes of hard disk, more than enough for any compiler and run-time. Therefore not only is access to free(dom) software easier, but you usually don't even have to port it to your system, since it already targets it. There should be no difficulty anymore to spread Ada or any other good language or software. What is needed for that however is a end-user "killer" application, an application that users want to install on their system and that will bring as dependency the language run-time it's written with onto all the systems. And if this application is not perfect, but good enough to motivate users to improve it, it's even better, since they they'll install the compiler to be able to patch it. For example, this is I got Haskell installed on my systems, for programs such as darcs or pandoc. ( Of course, the reverse is also true: I try to avoid installing applications written in languages I don't want to install on my system :-/ ) -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ "Le mercure monte ? C'est le moment d'acheter !"