an interested business-oriented programmer

an interested business-oriented programmer

[Rod Weston]

I am currently surveying the state of programming in the business
world, deciding where to get involved with OOP.  In the few days that
I have been evaluating Ada, it seems to have the attributes of a
language I would like to learn, but I am rather concerned about the
lack of popular support for it, especially in the business world.  I
went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and found not a
single book on Ada.  I went to my library and found only four books,
two of which were written before 1987.  And I haven't seen a single
reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in
Ada.  Could someone offer some encouragement for me?  I don't mind
being a pioneer, I just want to have some assurance that my efforts
will not be wasted.

Thanks for your consideration.

Rod Weston

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Marin David Condic]

It depends on exactly what you are looking for.

To start with, visit: http://www.adapower.org/ since this will point you at
a lot of additional resources. I invite you to look over my Ada page at:
http://www.mcondic.com/ - you may find code and links there that would be
useful. (In particular, in my "Utilities" code, you'll find lots of
financial calculations.)

Is Ada suitable for business software development? Absolutely! In
particular, Decimal types and Annex F aim to support business software. You
probably won't find as much suppost in other general purpose languages. From
a purely technical standpoint, I'd use Ada for serious business software
development unless I had special conditions that made something else a
better choice. (specific hardware without an Ada compiler, use of specific
subsystems, databases, etc, that make some other language more practical...)

Books: There are a number of books out there. See AdaPower for a
bibliography. You can at least order some of them if not available in the
bookstore. (Some are unfortunately out of print.) There are also on-line
tutorials available so look for those as well.

General advice: You can usually put together a good software development kit
for Ada that will give you more or less the same facilities you might find
in almost any other general purpose language. The down side is that you kind
of have to assemble various pieces of it on your own. The Gnat public
distribution (available free of charge - see links on Adapower or my page)
is a good place to start for a set of very portable development tools. RR
Software has an Ada compiler and a GUI Builder and API for the Windows
environment called Claw. Aonix has compilers for a variety of platforms &
other development tools as well. Lots of choices there, but you need to
figure out what all your needs are and maybe go digging around for the
missing pieces. (Ada doesn't come bundled with a large class library like
Java or MSVC++ - a down side. But you can find collections of stuff all over
that get you a lot of the same functionality.)

You'll find that Ada is a lot more portable than other languages and that it
isn't hard to move code from one processor/OS to another - as long as you
stuck to what the language defines and don't use processor/OS dependent
third-party stuff. (GUIs are a prime example - hard to make that portable
and have all the wonderful features possible within a given OS!) This is an
advantage to Ada and also a weakness. MSVC++ provides for all intents and
purposes, its own version of C++. Using the whole of it, you won't build
portable code - especially as you use the MFC. No portability, but boy can
you get at all the nooks & crannies of Windows all from a nicely integrated
development environment. Ada can build programs to run on a PC, but you have
to assemble the pieces yourself to some extent and you don't get at all the
corners of the OS quite so easily (sometimes easier - if you have the right
tools). Personally, I'd rather do the job in Ada for a variety of reasons,
but I can see why others might opt for what they can leverage out of tools
more tailored to the specific environment. In other words, I'd recommend
Ada, but be advised you might need to pull together different pieces from
different sources rather than get a one-stop-shopping solution.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Rod Weston" <rod_weston@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f7ce0059.0106060822.55a13f7@posting.google.com...
> I am currently surveying the state of programming in the business
> world, deciding where to get involved with OOP.  In the few days that
> I have been evaluating Ada, it seems to have the attributes of a
> language I would like to learn, but I am rather concerned about the
> lack of popular support for it, especially in the business world.  I
> went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and found not a
> single book on Ada.  I went to my library and found only four books,
> two of which were written before 1987.  And I haven't seen a single
> reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in
> Ada.  Could someone offer some encouragement for me?  I don't mind
> being a pioneer, I just want to have some assurance that my efforts
> will not be wasted.
>
> Thanks for your consideration.
>
> Rod Weston

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[tmoran]

>reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in
>Ada.  Could someone offer some encouragement for me?  I don't mind
  Have you looked at the Ada Success Stories?  You should be able
to get there from www.adapower.com
  I myself used Ada in a project to merge, and clean, some large
stock & commodity price history databases for a data retailer.
Exceptions were very helpful in preventing the leakage of numbers
that were bad in ways I hadn't anticipated.  Fixed point with
various deltas worked well for prices given in 1/8ths, etc.

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Jerry van Dijk]

rod_weston@yahoo.com (Rod Weston) writes:

> And I haven't seen a single
> reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in
> Ada.  Could someone offer some encouragement for me?  I don't mind
> being a pioneer, I just want to have some assurance that my efforts
> will not be wasted.

Alas, you won't be a pioneer. I've use Ada in a business setting as well.
I think part of the problem (at least, over here) is that most applications
are written inside a company, and the language used never makes it out of
the development group.

-- 
--  Jerry van Dijk   | email: jvandyk@attglobal.net
--  Leiden, Holland  | web:   home.trouwweb.nl/Jerry

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Gary Scott]

Hi,
So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...

Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> It depends on exactly what you are looking for.
> 
> To start with, visit: http://www.adapower.org/ since this will point you at
> a lot of additional resources. I invite you to look over my Ada page at:
> http://www.mcondic.com/ - you may find code and links there that would be
> useful. (In particular, in my "Utilities" code, you'll find lots of
> financial calculations.)
> 
> Is Ada suitable for business software development? Absolutely! In
> particular, Decimal types and Annex F aim to support business software. You
> probably won't find as much suppost in other general purpose languages. From
> a purely technical standpoint, I'd use Ada for serious business software
> development unless I had special conditions that made something else a
> better choice. (specific hardware without an Ada compiler, use of specific
> subsystems, databases, etc, that make some other language more practical...)
> 
> Books: There are a number of books out there. See AdaPower for a
> bibliography. You can at least order some of them if not available in the
> bookstore. (Some are unfortunately out of print.) There are also on-line
> tutorials available so look for those as well.
> 
> General advice: You can usually put together a good software development kit
> for Ada that will give you more or less the same facilities you might find
> in almost any other general purpose language. The down side is that you kind
> of have to assemble various pieces of it on your own. The Gnat public
> distribution (available free of charge - see links on Adapower or my page)
> is a good place to start for a set of very portable development tools. RR
> Software has an Ada compiler and a GUI Builder and API for the Windows
> environment called Claw. Aonix has compilers for a variety of platforms &
> other development tools as well. Lots of choices there, but you need to
> figure out what all your needs are and maybe go digging around for the
> missing pieces. (Ada doesn't come bundled with a large class library like
> Java or MSVC++ - a down side. But you can find collections of stuff all over
> that get you a lot of the same functionality.)
> 
> You'll find that Ada is a lot more portable than other languages and that it
> isn't hard to move code from one processor/OS to another - as long as you
> stuck to what the language defines and don't use processor/OS dependent
> third-party stuff. (GUIs are a prime example - hard to make that portable
> and have all the wonderful features possible within a given OS!) This is an
> advantage to Ada and also a weakness. MSVC++ provides for all intents and
> purposes, its own version of C++. Using the whole of it, you won't build
> portable code - especially as you use the MFC. No portability, but boy can
> you get at all the nooks & crannies of Windows all from a nicely integrated
> development environment. Ada can build programs to run on a PC, but you have
> to assemble the pieces yourself to some extent and you don't get at all the
> corners of the OS quite so easily (sometimes easier - if you have the right
> tools). Personally, I'd rather do the job in Ada for a variety of reasons,
> but I can see why others might opt for what they can leverage out of tools
> more tailored to the specific environment. In other words, I'd recommend
> Ada, but be advised you might need to pull together different pieces from
> different sources rather than get a one-stop-shopping solution.
> 
> MDC
> --
> Marin David Condic
> Senior Software Engineer
> Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
> Enabling the digital revolution
> e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
> Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/
> 
> "Rod Weston" <rod_weston@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f7ce0059.0106060822.55a13f7@posting.google.com...
> > I am currently surveying the state of programming in the business
> > world, deciding where to get involved with OOP.  In the few days that
> > I have been evaluating Ada, it seems to have the attributes of a
> > language I would like to learn, but I am rather concerned about the
> > lack of popular support for it, especially in the business world.  I
> > went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and found not a
> > single book on Ada.  I went to my library and found only four books,
> > two of which were written before 1987.  And I haven't seen a single
> > reference to a business (inventory, sales, etc.) program written in
> > Ada.  Could someone offer some encouragement for me?  I don't mind
> > being a pioneer, I just want to have some assurance that my efforts
> > will not be wasted.
> >
> > Thanks for your consideration.
> >
> > Rod Weston

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Marin David Condic]

Well.... To some extent, you've got that. For example, Gnat with AdaGIDE and
GDB (on a Windows/PC platform) gets you part of the way there. Picking up
GTKAda or Claw gets you a GUI builder. Various packages within Gnat and from
a variety of other sources kind of gets you the sorts of things you might
find in MFC. So it isn't as if you can't get there from here.

What you don't have (and I've suggested before that it would be A Good
Thing) is one highly integrated set of tools and documents that do all of
these things together as one unified development kit. Part of the problem is
that Ada desires to be as portable as possible and these sorts of integrated
development kits aim at specific platforms. Another problem is that Ada
doesn't have a big, institutional investor (ala Microsoft or Sun) to
subsidize the development of such a kit and market it as the cure for what
ails you. The Ada vendors that are out there can only do so much with the
funds they have so unless the market appeared to be big enough to attract
sufficient buyers, its hard for them to make a business case for such an
investment.

If I had the wealth of Bill Gates and the desire to promote Ada, I'd do
this: Fund a development kit that had the editor, compiler, class library,
GUI builder, debugger & documentation all wired together in something
vaguely approximating what MSVC++ does. I'd get a good "Beginning Ada" book
and "How To Use Marin's Development Classes" book written & bundled together
with the CD containing the kit (electronic and printed form). I'd get the
kits put into stand-alone displays with flashy graphics in computer and
student bookstores, priced at a level that makes it possible to "impulse
buy" the package. (Maybe even make the whole thing downloadable from the
Internet at the same time...free or for a fee?) That and a few adds in geek
magazines (and, of course, the Internet) about how cool Ada is and where to
get the development kit ought to about do it. A whole class of programmers
exists out there who have never heard of Ada (and thus don't have any
anti-Ada bigotry) who might be willing to learn it and try it out if they
had an entire kit available to them at an affordable price.

Of course, I don't have that kind of money and most of the people that do
aren't spending it to promote languages - unless it is one they control &
think will ultimately reap them financial rewards. Maybe something similar
could be done as a consortium with part-timers in it for possible future
rewards, but I don't think it can happen without some substantial investment
of $$$. At one time, the government might have done this back when they had
a vested interest in making Ada succeed, but they've basically abandoned Ada
in terms of any financial committment.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Gary Scott" <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> wrote in message
news:3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com...
> Hi,
> So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
> with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...
>

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
>So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
>with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...

Perhaps because the Ada market's insistance on standard conformance prevents
"someone" from embracing-and-extending the language to trap their users.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Gary Scott]

Obviously.  What we're talking about is expanding Ada's market.  I too
would prefer that extensions be kept to a minimum.  I'm not familiar
enough with Ada to know that extensions would be required simply to
access the Win32 C-based API (I hadn't thought so).  Those are the only
extensions that I'm aware of that MIGHT be required for some other
languages (at least until the next standard revision).  

If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> In article <3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
> >So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
> >with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...
> 
> Perhaps because the Ada market's insistance on standard conformance prevents
> "someone" from embracing-and-extending the language to trap their users.
> 
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Marin David Condic]

Don't you mean "Engulfing and Devouring" the language.

(I think that came from a Mel Brooks film - Engulf & Devour.)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:BKwT6.1494$bA3.73307@www.newsranger.com...
> Perhaps because the Ada market's insistance on standard conformance
prevents
> "someone" from embracing-and-extending the language to trap their users.
>

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Jerry van Dijk]

Gary Scott <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:

> enough with Ada to know that extensions would be required simply to
> access the Win32 C-based API (I hadn't thought so). 

None. An Ada compiler for windows includes the Win32 API. For at least
GNAT there are additional tools like GNATCOM, to write/use DCOM+/ActiveX
etc.

> If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
> easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
> set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).

That's why we have AdaGIDE (or for emacs types like me, the brilliant emacs 
ada-mode or GLIDE).

-- 
--  Jerry van Dijk   | email: jvandyk@attglobal.net
--  Leiden, Holland  | web:   home.trouwweb.nl/Jerry

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Marin David Condic]

You don't need to extend Ada to get at the Win32api. You can get there
through a set of packages distributed with a number of Ada compilers called
Win32Ada....

I think Ted's comments had more to do with the notion that because Ada is
rather stringently controlled in terms of a standard, etc. that "certain
powers that be" would be unable to glom onto it, add their own extensions,
through sheer size get thousands of users hooked on their "embraced and
extended" "standard" and then totally control the market - thus bringing the
Justice Department down on their head with anti-trust suits.

Of course there is nothing stopping someone from using Ada syntax & adding
things to it. Any Ada compiler can do that - and even still be validated,
provided there is some mode in which it will interpret "standard" Ada95.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Gary Scott" <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> wrote in message
news:3B1EAAB4.5C86F53D@lmtas.lmco.com...
> Obviously.  What we're talking about is expanding Ada's market.  I too
> would prefer that extensions be kept to a minimum.  I'm not familiar
> enough with Ada to know that extensions would be required simply to
> access the Win32 C-based API (I hadn't thought so).  Those are the only
> extensions that I'm aware of that MIGHT be required for some other
> languages (at least until the next standard revision).
>
> If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
> easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
> set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).
>
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> >
> > In article <3B1E7320.5E21BB4F@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
> > >So why doesn't someone put together a "Visual Ada" product integrated
> > >with Visual Studio and mass market it?  They did it for Fortran...
> >
> > Perhaps because the Ada market's insistance on standard conformance
prevents
> > "someone" from embracing-and-extending the language to trap their users.
> >
> > ---
> > T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
> >           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3B1EAAB4.5C86F53D@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
>Obviously.  What we're talking about is expanding Ada's market.  I too
>would prefer that extensions be kept to a minimum.  I'm not familiar
>enough with Ada to know that extensions would be required simply to
>access the Win32 C-based API (I hadn't thought so).  Those are the only
>extensions that I'm aware of that MIGHT be required for some other
>languages (at least until the next standard revision).  

Gnat manages to do it with just "stdcall" as an interface convention, which is
allowed by the RM. Gnat has lots of other (allowed) extensions, but to my
knowledge that's the only one that is required to deal with the Win32 API.
Really nothing outside the LRM is *required*. However, the larger mass-market
compiler vendors prefer to tie their customers in with proprietary language
extensions and GUI interfaces that do everything for you so you don't have to
learn how its done yourself.

>If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
>easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
>set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).

After my recent stint as a graduate student dealing with undergrads, my fear is
that you are absolutely right here. The students I dealt with were totally lost
without VisualStudio, even the sharper ones.

Still, I'd think you are doing students a great disservice if they never learn
how to use a compiler from the command-line. Sure, the high-level stuff is
pretty, and can automate some simple tasks. But they should't graduate thinking
that everything under their GUI is magic. They shouldn't be afraid of having to
learn to use different tools.

I find it amusing that you seem to be using "geeks" above as a synonym for
"people who really know what they are doing". That's fine, as it goes ("geeks"
is certainly shorter). But shouldn't we be teaching students to really know what
they are doing? If not, what good is the degree? (I'm sorry, this isn't your
issue. Its a separate one. I'll shut up about it now.)

Another often-neglected fact it that Emacs actually serves quite well as an IDE
for Gnat. The only thing that's kind of a pain is adding directories to the
project search path (there's good support for it, but no "browse" or filename
completion to help with the task). To top it off, Emacs can do tons of things
that most other editors can't. Most other Windows Ada compilers also have some
kind of IDE (usually a bit more graphical than emacs, but also less powerful).

Perhaps there aren't any free VisualStudio clones out there that come with an
Ada compiler. But then VisualStudio itself isn't free either, is it?


---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Ted Dennison]

In article <9fo0c0$nji$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>
>Of course there is nothing stopping someone from using Ada syntax & adding
>things to it. Any Ada compiler can do that - and even still be validated,
>provided there is some mode in which it will interpret "standard" Ada95.

That's true. Gnat itself does this. It doesn't even make the standard-conforming
mode the default mode. To be fair, the issue in question is a rather minor one
in Gnat's case. But still, if they can do that successfully, nothing's stopping
anyone else from making a "turbo-Ada" with an extension-disabled mode.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Gary Scott]

Hi,

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 

<snip>

> >If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
> >easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
> >set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).
> 
> After my recent stint as a graduate student dealing with undergrads, my fear is
> that you are absolutely right here. The students I dealt with were totally lost
> without VisualStudio, even the sharper ones.
> 
> Still, I'd think you are doing students a great disservice if they never learn
> how to use a compiler from the command-line. Sure, the high-level stuff is
> pretty, and can automate some simple tasks. But they should't graduate thinking
> that everything under their GUI is magic. They shouldn't be afraid of having to
> learn to use different tools.

I totally agree and am appalled by some of our new hire inabilities or
at least severe discomfort level at using command line tools.  I've
always been comfortable in the extreme (compared to my engineer
coworkers) with command line based computing.

> 
> I find it amusing that you seem to be using "geeks" above as a synonym for
> "people who really know what they are doing". That's fine, as it goes ("geeks"
> is certainly shorter). But shouldn't we be teaching students to really know what
> they are doing? If not, what good is the degree? (I'm sorry, this isn't your
> issue. Its a separate one. I'll shut up about it now.)

Well, I guess that was my intended meaning of "geek", of which I
consider myself one (even if no one else does).  It certainly wasn't an
insult.  But when you're building market share, you need to be concerned
about a broad spectrum of interest levels.  Raising the "general
consciousness level" is needed, and so is having a product being
actively marketed in the "mass media" or at the very least, the top
software catalog sources.  You cannot just focus on the UNIX crowd or on
some Green Hill's OS customers.  You need to make Ada "sexy".  Get them
hooked, then force feed them the "horrible" details about command line
processing beneath the hood.

> 
> Another often-neglected fact it that Emacs actually serves quite well as an IDE
> for Gnat. The only thing that's kind of a pain is adding directories to the
> project search path (there's good support for it, but no "browse" or filename
> completion to help with the task). To top it off, Emacs can do tons of things
> that most other editors can't. Most other Windows Ada compilers also have some
> kind of IDE (usually a bit more graphical than emacs, but also less powerful).

I use Kedit myself.  There are several Emacs users in my group.  I like
to have fun with them by writing Kedit macros that outperform their
beloved Emacs macros.  At one point there was a team of 5 tweaking a
macro trying to beat execution performance of one of my Kedit
macros...didn't even come close, theirs taking upwards of 2 minutes on
an HP Pentium 300 and mine taking about 7 seconds on a Micron P90.

> 
> Perhaps there aren't any free VisualStudio clones out there that come with an
> Ada compiler. But then VisualStudio itself isn't free either, is it?

Nope, not free, not even close, but extremely popular by comparison to
virtually anything in competition.

> 
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Pascal Obry]

Gary Scott <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:

> If you want to get STUDENTS trained in Ada, then you've got to make it
> easy for them.  They're NOT going to accept a basic command line tool
> set environment to any great extent (sure a few 'geeks' will).

So they will maybe never be ready to work in real projects. A project is often
based on basic command line tool for compiling, building project but also to
backup, use version control, write scripts to automate things either through
makefile... Of course if the target is Windows and only windows they just need
to know Visual Basic... But we are not talking about software engineers, are
we :) ?

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[tmoran]

>Gnat manages to do it with just "stdcall" as an interface convention, which is
  Is there a Windows targetted compiler that doesn't support "stdcall"?

>compiler vendors prefer to tie their customers in with proprietary language
>extensions and GUI interfaces that do everything for you so you don't have to
  "Switching costs are the norm in information industries."
Shapiro and Varian, "Information Rules", Harvard Business School Press

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Al Christians]

tmoran@acm.org wrote:
> 
> >Gnat manages to do it with just "stdcall" as an interface convention, which is
>   Is there a Windows targetted compiler that doesn't support "stdcall"?
> 

The Gnat user guide says:

"If the C calling convention is missing from package API, then the
definition file contains the mangled Ada names of the above entities" 

That seems to say that interfacing with unmangled names is not 
supported by gnat with StdCall.  Is that right?


Al

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3B1FA9B2.F5D98BD0@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
>Ted Dennison wrote:
>> I find it amusing that you seem to be using "geeks" above as a synonym for
>> "people who really know what they are doing". That's fine, as it goes 
>Well, I guess that was my intended meaning of "geek", of which I
>consider myself one (even if no one else does).  It certainly wasn't an
>insult. ...

I didn't take it as one. As I said, I just found it amusing. I have been married
for over 13 years. You'll have to do a lot better than that to hurt my feelings.
:-)

>I use Kedit myself.  There are several Emacs users in my group.  I like
>to have fun with them by writing Kedit macros that outperform their
>beloved Emacs macros.  At one point there was a team of 5 tweaking a

To me the speed issue with macros is that they are signficantly faster (and less
erorr-prone) than doing it by hand. If I have to wait a couple of seconds,
that's just more time for me to kick back and think, "damn I'm glad I'm not
doing this by hand!" :-)  

>Nope, not free, not even close, but extremely popular by comparison to
>virtually anything in competition.
Well, my point is that you have to be fair in your comparison. There are
compilers (Aonix) with a similar environment for a similar price. There are
compilers with what some consider a far superior environment for a far superior
price (Rational). Considering that its Free Software, what you get with the
"student version" of Gnat is quite good.

---
T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
          home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Gary Scott]

Hi,

Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
> In article <3B1FA9B2.F5D98BD0@lmtas.lmco.com>, Gary Scott says...
> >Ted Dennison wrote:
> >> I find it amusing that you seem to be using "geeks" above as a synonym for
> >> "people who really know what they are doing". That's fine, as it goes
> >Well, I guess that was my intended meaning of "geek", of which I
> >consider myself one (even if no one else does).  It certainly wasn't an
> >insult. ...
> 
> I didn't take it as one. As I said, I just found it amusing. I have been married
> for over 13 years. You'll have to do a lot better than that to hurt my feelings.
> :-)
> 
> >I use Kedit myself.  There are several Emacs users in my group.  I like
> >to have fun with them by writing Kedit macros that outperform their
> >beloved Emacs macros.  At one point there was a team of 5 tweaking a
> 
> To me the speed issue with macros is that they are signficantly faster (and less
> erorr-prone) than doing it by hand. If I have to wait a couple of seconds,
> that's just more time for me to kick back and think, "damn I'm glad I'm not
> doing this by hand!" :-)

I failed to mention also, that it took fewer instructions in Kedit, so I
spent less time creating the macro in the first place.  It just so
happened in this case, that Kedit was uniquely well-suited for the
particular task.

> 
> >Nope, not free, not even close, but extremely popular by comparison to
> >virtually anything in competition.
> Well, my point is that you have to be fair in your comparison. There are
> compilers (Aonix) with a similar environment for a similar price. There are
> compilers with what some consider a far superior environment for a far superior
> price (Rational). Considering that its Free Software, what you get with the
> "student version" of Gnat is quite good.
> 
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>           home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Florian Weimer]

Al Christians <alc@PublicPropertySoftware.com> writes:

> The Gnat user guide says:
> 
> "If the C calling convention is missing from package API, then the
> definition file contains the mangled Ada names of the above entities" 

I can't find this in my documentation set (for GNAT 3.13p), and it's
hard to tell what this means without more context.

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Al Christians]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> 
> Al Christians <alc@PublicPropertySoftware.com> writes:
> 
> > The Gnat user guide says:
> >
> > "If the C calling convention is missing from package API, then the
> > definition file contains the mangled Ada names of the above entities"
> 
> I can't find this in my documentation set (for GNAT 3.13p), and it's
> hard to tell what this means without more context.

My version is 3.13p also.  The doc is labeled:


"Document revision level 1.316

GNAT Version 3.13p

Date: 2000/05/05 08:09:59

Ada Core Technologies, Inc."

The excerpt I posted is in "Creating the Definition File" under 
"Building DLL's with GNAT".


Al

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Florian Weimer]

Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com> writes:

>> I can't find this in my documentation set (for GNAT 3.13p), and it's
>> hard to tell what this means without more context.

> The excerpt I posted is in "Creating the Definition File" under 
> "Building DLL's with GNAT".

Ah! ACT is distributing different manuals for different platforms
under the same title.  These sections are probably found only in the
Win32 version.

Recent Ada books [was: an interested business-oriented programmer]

[BSCrawford]

In article <f7ce0059.0106060822.55a13f7@posting.google.com>,
rod_weston@yahoo.com (Rod Weston) writes:

>I went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and 
>found not a single book on Ada. 
  ...etc...

My book "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary" 
published in 2000, will not be found on the bookshelves at 
Barnes and Noble. But if you go to their website (www.bn.com) 
and search on "Ada Essentials" you will find that they have it 
in stock and can mail it out within 24 hours. It is also available 
in two electronic forms. See www.learnada.com. 

There have been other recent Ada books (McCormick and 
Beidler come to mind), which can undoubtedly be found using 
search engines. 

See, also: http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigada/education/

Bard S. Crawford, 
  Author of "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary," 
  a compact volume available in three forms: printed book, pdf 
  file, and a collection of browser-based web pages.  See
http://www.learnada.com  
-----------------------
Stage Harbor Software
9 Patriots Drive - Lexington, MA - 02420 USA
bard@learnada.com - 781-862-3613

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Pascal Obry]

tmoran@acm.org writes:

>   Is there a Windows targetted compiler that doesn't support "stdcall"?

No. Otherwise it would not be called a Windows targetted compiler.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

Re: Recent Ada books [was: an interested business-oriented programmer]

[Marin David Condic]

I just hit up Google and found: http://www.bestbookdeal.com/ By going to
Computer-Books-Category | Programming | Languages | Ada I turned up two
pages of references - many by names familiar here. How many of these are in
print or available I cannot say, but there certainly seemed to be enough to
choose from that one probably doesn't need to complain that there are no Ada
books.

BTW: As an early reviewer of Dr. Crawford's book, I can give it a very
strong recommendation. It is targeting an audience of programmers who need
to get up to speed with Ada quickly and may not need to find every nook &
cranny of Ada right off. I found all the hyperlinks to be a big aid as well.
It is a good place to start if you already know some programming language(s)
and are just not familiar with Ada.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"BSCrawford" <bscrawford@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010608135908.00947.00002218@nso-fs.aol.com...
> In article <f7ce0059.0106060822.55a13f7@posting.google.com>,
> rod_weston@yahoo.com (Rod Weston) writes:
>
> >I went to my local Barnes and Noble bookstore last night and
> >found not a single book on Ada.
>   ...etc...
>
> My book "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary"
> published in 2000, will not be found on the bookshelves at
> Barnes and Noble. But if you go to their website (www.bn.com)
> and search on "Ada Essentials" you will find that they have it
> in stock and can mail it out within 24 hours. It is also available
> in two electronic forms. See www.learnada.com.
>
> There have been other recent Ada books (McCormick and
> Beidler come to mind), which can undoubtedly be found using
> search engines.
>
> See, also: http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigada/education/
>
> Bard S. Crawford,
>   Author of "Ada Essentials: Overview, Examples and Glossary,"
>   a compact volume available in three forms: printed book, pdf
>   file, and a collection of browser-based web pages.  See
> http://www.learnada.com
> -----------------------
> Stage Harbor Software
> 9 Patriots Drive - Lexington, MA - 02420 USA
> bard@learnada.com - 781-862-3613

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <87ofrzj6y2.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>, Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:
> Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com> writes:
> 
>>> I can't find this in my documentation set (for GNAT 3.13p), and it's
>>> hard to tell what this means without more context.
> 
>> The excerpt I posted is in "Creating the Definition File" under 
>> "Building DLL's with GNAT".
> 
> Ah! ACT is distributing different manuals for different platforms
> under the same title.  These sections are probably found only in the
> Win32 version.

Well, Windows is the operating system with DLLs, right ?

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Georg Bauhaus]

Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:

 
: Well, Windows is the operating system with DLLs, right ?

Well, it is one operating system with DLLs. Another one now has SMP
and a nice journaled file system. GNAT/EMX producing several kinds
of executables. PMDebug as a gdb frontend is wonderful to work with.
(From a friend I hear that Brit. Airways computers are still warp-driven.)

--Georg 
---
Microsoft Windows--a fresh perspective on information hiding

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <9ftnpg$8ae$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>, Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:
> Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:
> 
>  
> : Well, Windows is the operating system with DLLs, right ?
> 
> Well, it is one operating system with DLLs. Another one now has SMP
> and a nice journaled file system. GNAT/EMX producing several kinds
> of executables. PMDebug as a gdb frontend is wonderful to work with.

Well it is a good thing you choose to keep it a secret what other
operating system uses that terminology.  All general purpose operating
systems offer something that does this -- the question is who uses
the same terminology.

I do not consider either SMP or journaled file systems to be relevant,
since those are very standard terms used across the industry.  DLLs are
a specific term not used in many operating systems that do the same thing.

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

Larry:

> Well it is a good thing you choose to keep it a secret what other
> operating system uses that terminology.

I think Georg tried to give you a hint instead of just writing
"OS/2".

> I do not consider either SMP or journaled file systems to be relevant,
> since those are very standard terms used across the industry.  DLLs are
> a specific term not used in many operating systems that do the same thing.

Besides OS/2 and Windows, I have heard that it should be
possible to use DLL's compiled for Windows in Linux (on the
Intel 32 bit architecture).

Jacob

PS: The layout of OS/2 DLL's is probably different from that
    of Windows DLL's since OS/2 is a 32 bit system.
-- 
"Dansk sprogn�vn er en flok spader!
 Cognac kan kun staves p� �n m�de"
 Henrik Christian Grove

Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[Georg Bauhaus]

Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:
: In article <9ftnpg$8ae$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>, Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:
:> : Well, Windows is the operating system with DLLs, right ?
:> 
:> Well, it is one operating system with DLLs.

: Well it is a good thing you choose to keep it a secret what other
: operating system uses that terminology.

OS/2 (now also eCS), as Jacob has kindly added.

: I do not consider either SMP or journaled file systems to be relevant,

Yes, true (only, linking is pretty fast :-).  Now the docs for
creating and using DLLs with gcc on OS/2 can be found in the
standard EMX distribution, which is required for GNAT. The
GNAT 3.13p on Windows documentation describes similar issues
for Windows, and the relevant sections appear not to be present
in other 3.13p docs.

(I was overreacting to the rule "allways name your OS
and compiler" ;.)

Georg

P.S.: Hm. Decus, isn't that VMS related? I wonder if this is
one more OS, with supporting Ada compilers, from which one can
learn a lot? (The hobbyist license beeing affordable, the hardware
probably not...)
-- 
---
Microsoft Windows--a fresh perspective on information hiding

Ada for Hobbyists on VMS (was: an interested business-oriented...)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <9g3ifb$2n9$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de>, Georg Bauhaus <sb463ba@l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> writes:
> Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote:

> P.S.: Hm. Decus, isn't that VMS related? I wonder if this is
> one more OS, with supporting Ada compilers, from which one can
> learn a lot? (The hobbyist license beeing affordable, the hardware
> probably not...)

There are regularly hobbyist-suitable VMS-capable machines on eBay.
The DECUS hobbyist license gets you the DEC Ada83 compilers for both
VAX and Alpha.  GNAT runs on Alpha VMS if you require Ada95, but
even the Alpha machines are sold on eBay.

Those used machines are not as fast as the latest ones being built,
but my own experience with Ada compilers is that if the compiler
gives me more time to think, the result turns out better :-)