Re: Ada-Oriented GUI

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Monday, March 26, 2018 at 5:29:08 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Dan'l Miller" wrote in message 
> news:ef8da3f2-70b3-4412-8a28-cedfc463d7ff@googlegroups.com...
> On Thursday, March 22, 2018 at 6:47:28 PM UTC-5, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> >> (Ada is wildly inappropriate for applications that are mostly GUI - use 
> >> some
> >> web-based langauge for that and use Ada for the heavy-duty processing.)
> 
> >So "Ada is wildly inappropriate for" graphical user interfaces in avionics 
> >cockpits?
> >Well, I guess that we can mark that one off the list then.  Real-time 
> >avionics
> >backend to control the fly-by-wire hardware of the airplane in Ada, and the
> >GUI for the cockpit in C# or Java on CLR or JVM bytecode VMs, right?
> 
> Calling an avionics display a "GUI" is confusing at best; there is little 
> relationship because of the strict requirements on avionics software. 
> (Something like RX would be unlikely to fly - pun intended - there can't be 
> "unexpected" anything in avionics software.)
> 
> For a conventional GUI (as in Windows or phone apps), some sort of web 
> technology seems like the way to go. If done right, very little code in a 
> conventional programming language is needed. One could use something like 
> Gnoga for that code. So I'm thinking of more like Ada + HTML rather than Ada 
> + some other programming language.

I agree with you for the majority of database-retrieval-from-servers apps on mobile devices, but I vociferously disagree the more the app differs from database-retrieval-from-servers:

https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/product/1006117-mobile-augmented-reality

So unlike the augmented-reality on a cockpit, augmented-reality in consumer mobile devices is unworthy of the grand Ada.

So unlike the gyroscopes on an airplane, the gyroscopic sensors in consumer mobile devices are unworthy of the grand Ada.

So unlike the GPU physics-processor in the cockpit of an airplane, the GPU physics-processor in consumer mobile devices are unworthy of the grand Ada.

So unlike the realtime crisp low-latency relatively high-frames-per-second images in cockpit displays, the low-latency relatively-high-frames-per-second imagery in a game or augmented reality in consumer mobile devices is unworthy of the grand Ada's compilation to processor-native instruction sets, but rather mobile consumer devices should display game & augmented-reality images should have the sluggish user experience as if they are executing on a Commodore 64, due to HTML and Javascript implementations.  By the way, perhaps this Commodore 64 emulator in Javascript would complete that vision of sluggishness, jitter, slowness, and high latency: 

http://badassjs.com/post/875129932/commodore-64-and-gameboy-emulation-in-javascript

I presume that this lack of worthiness of the grand Ada is because consumer mobile devices have no defense contractor with deep pockets shelling out gobs of money for compiler toolchain licenses & support fees.