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,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Received: by 10.13.203.77 with SMTP id n74mr12335213ywd.35.1440025082623; Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:58:02 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 10.182.112.138 with SMTP id iq10mr100866obb.23.1440025082545; Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:58:02 -0700 (PDT) Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.glorb.com!y105no1654538qge.1!news-out.google.com!h8ni821igv.0!nntp.google.com!se8no6658604igc.0!postnews.google.com!glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 15:58:02 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <93c8c452-488c-4deb-a3cb-e9df4a1558ce@googlegroups.com> Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: glegroupsg2000goo.googlegroups.com; posting-host=149.32.224.36; posting-account=Qh2kiQoAAADpCLlhT_KTYoGO8dU3n4I6 NNTP-Posting-Host: 149.32.224.36 References: <29dd5458-f9ce-4db8-9128-8ab35a9ce5f8@googlegroups.com> <64bc671c-72e5-4924-b703-3b907c69949c@googlegroups.com> <877fq9uj6g.fsf@theworld.com> <65061686-5c8f-433b-9b11-9e228298158e@googlegroups.com> <87k2u96jms.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <06f8a6f9-d219-4d40-b9ac-8518e93839bd@googlegroups.com> <87y4io63jy.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <7a29d3e9-d1bd-4f4a-b1a6-14d3e1a83a4d@googlegroups.com> <87mvz36fen.fsf@jester.gateway.sonic.net> <2215b44f-8a89-47c6-a4c4-52b74d2dac45@googlegroups.com> <9e492c82-868d-43d3-a18a-38274400e337@googlegroups.com> <40184feb-4053-4ac3-8eaa-c3bd9cd8a77c@googlegroups.com> <10272577-945f-4682-85bc-8ad47f3653ae@googlegroups.com> <87si8i81k2.fsf@atmarama.net> <8076cbd0-2655-4c98-b70e-cb5f0c32e4ba@googlegroups.com> <93c8c452-488c-4deb-a3cb-e9df4a1558ce@googlegroups.com> User-Agent: G2/1.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <8e6ea695-705c-4907-b02f-cdfa34876916@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: If not Ada, what else... From: Anh Vo Injection-Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:58:02 +0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:27516 Date: 2015-08-19T15:58:02-07:00 List-Id: On Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 3:19:45 PM UTC-7, rri...@itu.edu wrote: > As to your comment about books, that is why I wrote Ada Distilled, to pro= vide simple, fully coded, tested examples with line-by-line comments. Alt= hough the Ada 2012 version is not quite ready (Ed Colbert of Absolute Softw= are is updating it), many people still seem to find the Ada 95 version (whi= ch includes some 2005 examples) useful as a place to get started. =20 >=20 > You are correct about other things. Greedy compiler and tool vendors ( = with the exception of Meridian and RR Software) were overpricing the produc= t so few hobbyists or start-ups could afford to choose Ada. Only Meridian= provided a fully functional Ada compiler for Windows at a reasonable price= . Janus was a really good compiler, but did not have easy support for Wi= ndows programming. Alsys was huge, cumbersome, too expensive, and not sui= table for any small organization. The Alsys complier did generate some pre= tty good code, but no one was comcerned about that. There weren't many oth= er options. =20 >=20 > So, community colleges continued to prefer Turbo-Pascal, a product that w= owed everyone at the time. I talked with Phillipe Kahn about Ada. He woul= d have loved to have had an opportunity to create a Turbo-Ada, but the timi= ng was wrong, and the opportunity was lost. The one (and perhaps, only) g= ood thing Reifer did when he was in charge at AJPO was fund the initial wor= k on GNAT. Once he left AJPO, he began to publicly disparage Ada, and tha= t did not help at all. >=20 > The poorly worded letter from Emmett Page set the stage for Ada's quick d= emise within the DoD. Now, there is no mandate, and most of the pekple I = know in the DoD software community have interpreted that letter as, not sim= ply cancelling the mandate, but cancelling Ada in favor of anything but Ada= . The camcellation of the mandate was a premature and devaststing event, = occurring exactly at the moment when Ada, as a language design (Ads 95) was= poised for extraordinary success. =20 >=20 >=20 > Ada, as a programming language, is still one of the very best for real en= gineering of software solutions (not so good for Q&D or hacking), but we ha= ve very few engineers in software pracrice. We have lots of talented prog= rammers, but few of them have any engineering background or understanding o= f engineering. An interesting outcome of learning Ada, for many of them, = was a better understanding of what we really meant by the term, software en= gineering. =20 >=20 > We, the past and present devotees of Ada, have made a lot of mistakes. = It is not clear that we can recover from the bad impression so many of our = software developer colleagues have regarding Ada. However, the new standa= rd includes some advanced computer science and software engineering feature= s not present in other, if any, software engineering languages: axiomatic p= rogram design (Hoare, Dijkstra), predicate calculus expressions, and much m= ore. =20 >=20 > We can, perhaps, rescue Ada's reputation, by reaching out beyond our own = narrow community with information about these powerful capabilities. That= can include more academic papers that use Ada, more articles in places tha= t programmers read, offering to teach an Ada class at local colleges, and u= sing Ada for more applications that real people use. =20 >=20 > I am now old, soon to enjoy my 80th birthday. My time as an advocate wil= l soon have passed. Perhaps some of you who are younger can find the cour= sfe and energy to do something to promote real software engineering using t= he one language designed to support an engineering approach to software dev= elopment: Ada. It is, in my view, still Ada. It is cerainly not C++. Nev= er has been. Why would anyone choose a language that is inherently error-= prone and expect a result that is error-free? >=20 Happy birthday Richard.=20 I am not sure if how many people have read this article. I have enjoyed it = very much. As the result, I am proud to say that Ada and Spark doing better= than the rest when compared 11 other university projects. This success sto= ry will brighten your birthday even more. http://www.adacore.com/press/spark-going-to-the-moon/ Anh Vo