Re: Do we need "Mission-Critical" software? Was: What to Do?

[n_brunot@my-deja.com]

In article <934iuf$eqv$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,
  Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> wrote:
> In article <9343b1$3g5$1@nnrp1.deja.com>,

> b) Ada 83 already went FAR further than other languages in
> accomodating "the importance and justification of other[s]
> languages".

Exact, but in a single direction which is the basic problem with
dramatic consequences. As you said, this was (lately) corrected in Ada95

> I added that the ONLY portable way to do this was to
> write an Ada driver that would interface to COBOL and C using
> the Ada features.

This is one of the portable way. a way is the ONLY way only until
someone find an other one ...
Java impose the basic type sizes for good reasons ...

> Hard to see how the language could make this more automatic,
> and the demand for tools in this area has not materialized (in
> our experience, for users of GNAT Professional, this is not the
> "biggest problem" for most of them).

From what I know, they usually deal with big projects, and a very small
portion of their code consists in pragma import.
I mean comparing with what is done in more usual development that is
done in C or in Java.
So they fall completely out the field I was talking about, and this is
indeed no big deal for them.
Companies developping products making a very wide use of C libraries
don't use Ada, and therefore don't use or care about any Ada compiler.

> Try another experiment, take a library written in Ada for use
> by Ada programs, and try to interface to it from C. This is
> in fact impossible, because C has no provision for interfacing
> to foreign languages at all.

Absolutely true. just one little problem :
99% of softwares (I may be optimistic) don't use Ada and don't care
about Ada components, so this is not a big problem for them.
That's why pragma export was so important.

> Now of course, since Ada has very good facilities in this area,
> you can write your library (using pragma Export (C ...)) so
> that it can be called by C, but all the burden on interlanguage
> communication is assumed by Ada, since C is completely
> incompetent in this area.
>
> If any language here fails to recognize the importance of
> other languages it is C, not Ada!

Which is of absolutely no importance for other languages since they rule
the market
They don't have to become popular (they are already) while Ada has too.
So whatever can be thought about it, Ada must improve ease of use with
other languages without caring if others languages care about Ada.



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