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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,eb35be86b1c0bdcb X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-12-14 04:40:08 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!news.gv.tsc.tdk.com!news.iac.net!newsgate.cistron.nl!news.tele.dk!4.1.16.34!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: THAAD Study on Ada Viability Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 12:31:40 GMT Organization: Deja.com Message-ID: <91aejd$jgr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <90lj4s$8h7$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <918u24$8ms$1@neptunium.btinternet.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.41 X-Article-Creation-Date: Thu Dec 14 12:31:40 2000 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; U) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x71.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.41 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:3120 Date: 2000-12-14T12:31:40+00:00 List-Id: In article <918u24$8ms$1@neptunium.btinternet.com>, "Singlespeeder" wrote: > What I find fustating about ADA is the IDE. This is a little peculiar, *the* IDE? there are of course many such ... > I know it was the first language > supposed to have one from the start Nope, that's reinventing history. To what are you referring? > but frankly working in defense it's > still DEC ada 83 and the DEC LSE while the rest of > the world moves on. Only a small part of the Ada world is still using DEC Ada 83 and DEC LSE. Yes, a significant part, but if you have the view that all DoD projects are using this combination, you have a very narrow view of the Ada world. > Even ADAGIDE is a great improvement (I've even >taken to developing on a PC under > ADAGIDE then FTPing back to VMS for final builds, > formal testing etc). AdaGIDE is a nice tool for students, but there are many IDE's out there (GLIDE, GRASP, SNIFF, APEX ...) for serious development use. Sounds like you are not familiar with any of these. It really sounds like your problem is not the state of Ada and its IDE's but rather the state of the particular development environment you find yourself in. > Then of course ACT looks good Well thanks for the comment, but I have no idea what it means in this context, are you referring to the use of GLIDE as your IDE? > The point is though that the defense industry isn't > going to upgrade the development environment and > move their development wholesale onto these suites. > Instead they'll stick with overstretched VAX/VMS > machines. Again, an amazingly narrow viewpoint. You are assuming that the environment you work in is the one used throughout the defense industry, but that's entirely incorrect. Very few defense projects are still using VAX machines. > If Ada is dead within the defense industry I > believe that it's not the fault > of the language. Rather it's the fault of the IDE, > and the unwillingness of > the buyers of defense products to move with the > times. *Some* buyers of defense projects, please do not assume your experience is typical of all projects. >Ada has shown itself > to be capable of moving on, the decision makers in >the Pentagon who mandated > not just the language but the toolset have not. Individual programs may have mandated specific tool sets, but the "Pentagon" never did anything of the kind. Even early in Ada days, many different environments, IDE's, architectures, and Ada compilers were in use, and only a fraction used Vax'es and DEC Ada 83. Now the fraction using this obsolete technology is much smaller (yes, of course we know that Ken Garlington is stuck in such an environment :-) but he is the first to know that that does not mean everyone else in defense is similarly stuck. An interesting indicator here is that it would be technically quite straighforward to port GNAT and its IDE to a Vax, but there has never been any serious commercial interest in doing so, from DEC or from any user. Whereas there has been interest in porting GNAT to all kinds of other architectures in defense contexts, including not only standard architectures (including OpenVMS/Alpha, which is of course supported by GNAT) but also non main-stream architectures such as the 750 and the i960. I am talking here strictly about interest from the defense community -- your community :-) Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/