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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,be23df8e7e275d73 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-02 01:45:00 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!194.8.194.95!news.netcologne.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!uni-duisburg.de!not-for-mail From: Georg Bauhaus Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Proving Correctness (was Java Portability) Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 08:44:59 +0000 (UTC) Organization: GMUGHDU Message-ID: <9kb3ub$hdo$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> References: <3B5DCE74.C12AA2D8@earthlink.net> <1Zu77.187$EF5.315498@nnrp1.proxad.net> <9jp5eo$e2b$2@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> <9jrdl3$mh2$1@a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de> <%hb87.917$%w2.3730577@nnrp3.proxad.net> <9jrt62$38t$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <3B619A6D.5DD6E782@home.com> <3B6636BA.96FD8348@home.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de X-Trace: a1-hrz.uni-duisburg.de 996741899 17848 134.91.4.34 (2 Aug 2001 08:44:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.uni-duisburg.de NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 08:44:59 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/1.5.8-20010221 ("Blue Water") (UNIX) (HP-UX/B.11.00 (9000/800)) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11050 Date: 2001-08-02T08:44:59+00:00 List-Id: nicolas wrote: : "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" a ?crit dans le message news: : 3B6636BA.96FD8348@home.com... : : The problem is more about IDE, GUI and libraries, I know there are excellent : debuggers for Ada [...] : This is an excellent example of amazing capabilities, and incredible : elementary problems as well. : : To get back to the the original point, it was there is no integrated and : frendly complete development kit for Ada, comparable to what any debutant : find for popular languages. : And unfortunately, a common Ada fan reaction to this is to give examples to [safety] You write about debutants, could you provide some reasoning why for these people there should be a more full grown environment than AdaGIDE? Is the Aonix product so far off for this group of people??? You could of course say, pressing F9 to get a runnable executable is so much easier that getting to know Emacs & Co conventions (or whatever) but that looks like a shortsighted self deception to me, at best. Can you provide any convincing empirical data to show that a Click-1-Button solution is better _for debutants_ than a Get-to-Know-Your-Tools craftspeople approach? WRT Short term, long term, programmer productivity, general knowledge of what compilation tools do, ease of adaption to different tools on different platforms... (Yes I know the lament of debutants about the additional percentage of time devoted to studying compiler/IDE docs, but I also know debutants and programmers who actually _enjoyed_ learning about their toolset, because of the interesting concepts and "visible" machinery. (And I'm not debating the merits of powerful environments.) To give an example, creating a project in your favourite Windows IDE is possibly "just a matter of dragging this here and that there and then chosing that from this drop down list and clicking bang" (depends on you IDE, this was Visual Age for C++:-) But this does in fact need learnuing as with every IDE (which have extensive documentation, so can't be that simple really), and likely entails non-portable build scripts (because the Click-1 programmer wouldn't know how to translate to a portable one, as there is no button for this). (side note: I can't help thinking this "Gimme an _easy_ IDE" thing has similar annoing side effects as being proud on having autoconfed otherwise portable software. Or as thinking "I know how to use my Word processor to its best because I can see the printouts." Ever compiled a book from more than one authors, all using the "same" Word processor? ;-) : - Ada has a lot of excellent qualities, but it is everything but popular. : The lack of integrated environment [claimed by the author, but see above] : and standard libraries coming with the : compiler has certainly something to do with it. What exactly? Certainly C++ became popular before there was today's STL. Then, certainly many Ada compilers come with libraries, since the RM has so much to say about them, e.g. for string processing. So I guess you mean container libraries or similar? Standard Database Interfaces? Numerical Algorithms? Graphics libraries? Encryption libraries? I'm sure you know both the old and the new Booch components and see that the requested libraries have been there for a long time. Only they are decoupled from each vendors compiler and are free for download instead. Compare them to their equivalents (more or less) in Java 2 (not 1!). Would you agree that Ada will become more popular if every ADA IDE comes with a sticker "Prebuilt Booch Components Inside"? Could be a point... -- Georg --- Microsoft Windows--a fresh perspective on information hiding