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From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng)
Newsgroups: 
 comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Quality systems (Was: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada
 mandate, and why it collapsed and died))
Date: 16 May 2003 07:04:17 -0700
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63913 comp.object:63542
 comp.lang.ada:37388 misc.misc:14224 comp.software-eng:19231
Date: 2003-05-16T14:04:18+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

tmoran@acm.org wrote in message news:<7GGwa.849701$F1.107635@sccrnsc04>...
> > In the early days of PCs, people
> > had to often write many things from scratch, and address
> > CGA and VGA and whatnot cards, and draw pixels, and interface
> > to telephony cards...  All that would have been practically
> > impossible in Ada.
>   Having done each of those things with both Ada and C, I'm curious why
> you could possibly think they were any harder in Ada, much less
> "practically impossible".  I have an especially pleasant memory of moving

Mostly from obervations of goings-on.  I don't doubt that
anything can be done in Ada for academic purposes or
to prove a point.  But for serious stakes, Ada groups
actually tend to wait for Ada APIs from C++ vendors, rather
than roll their own if things look bad -- as C++
groups are apt to do.

Of course, I don't claim extensive involvement with
Ada groups.  If what I observed is the exception
rather than the norm, I would be happy to hear
from Ada people who have had little qualms about
rolling their own stuff when the vendors were
not up to snuff.

But what I hear from this group is people who
claim Ada is perfect for everything from writing
device drivers to artificial intelligence.  But
if it becomes clear that the Ada "device driver authors"
have a hard time dealing with null-terminated strings, then
one tends to wonder if the all-encompassing claims are
perhaps a tiny bit exaggerated.