* Comment on Ada usage @ 2001-08-21 21:05 Wes Groleau 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:29 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 2 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Wes Groleau @ 2001-08-21 21:05 UTC (permalink / raw) In embedded systems: ADA [sic] is used less than Forth ? http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010813S0073 -- Wes Groleau http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:05 Comment on Ada usage Wes Groleau @ 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic ` (2 more replies) 2001-08-21 21:29 ` Marin David Condic 1 sibling, 3 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2001-08-21 21:20 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <3B82CD0B.4A551A42@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>, Wes Groleau says... > > >In embedded systems: ADA [sic] is used less than Forth ? >http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010813S0073 That was a reader survey. In the article he comes right out and says this isn't even close to scientific. He even points out some places where their numbers are horribly at odds with more scientific polls. I'd be more interested in Jerry Petry's opinion of his charactarization of Forth vs. Ada, as he's a fan of both languages (whereas this guy obviously isn't). --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison @ 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-08-22 16:04 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:46 ` Wes Groleau 2001-08-22 18:16 ` Jerry Petrey 2 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-08-21 21:40 UTC (permalink / raw) Well, he did say a nice (if inaccurate) thing about Ada - that he thought all compilers should have the kind of validation Ada has. His observation is that Ada compilers don't have bugs as a result - something that demonstrates he's never used an Ada compiler seriously! It might be accurate to say that Ada compilers have substantially fewer "bugs" and/or diversions from the standard due to validation. Still, the tone was definitely condescending to both of us Ada programmers. :-) Of course, complaining about it isn't going to help - basically he's right. There isn't much Ada use in embedded systems compared to C(++) and the guys doing that work aren't terribly fond of Ada. The way to correct the attitude he has is to correct the problem - make Ada more available and more popular and then we don't have to whine when someone picks on our favorite language. 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:EgAg7.9667$2u.71724@www.newsranger.com... > > That was a reader survey. In the article he comes right out and says this isn't > even close to scientific. He even points out some places where their numbers are > horribly at odds with more scientific polls. > > I'd be more interested in Jerry Petry's opinion of his charactarization of Forth > vs. Ada, as he's a fan of both languages (whereas this guy obviously isn't). ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-08-22 16:04 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-22 16:33 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2001-08-22 16:04 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <9lukgq$f5f$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says... >Still, the tone was definitely condescending to both of us Ada programmers. >:-) Of course, complaining about it isn't going to help - basically he's >right. There isn't much Ada use in embedded systems compared to C(++) and >the guys doing that work aren't terribly fond of Ada. The way to correct the One of the more respectable industry survery numbers he mentioned put Ada at %10. That's obviously not a majority, but neither is it an insignificant number that can be freely ignored, like he goes on to imply. Then again, about %10 of all people are left handed like me, but everyone building manually-manipuated objects acts like we don't exist either. So its not like this annoying attitude is unique to this one author, or even programming languages in general. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-22 16:04 ` Ted Dennison @ 2001-08-22 16:33 ` Marin David Condic 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-08-22 16:33 UTC (permalink / raw) 10% sounds a little closer to reality. However, one needs to consider the readership of Embedded.Com. What percentage of them use Ada? That could account for skewing the results to the near-zero number they got. I suspect that most of their readership builds smaller consumer-oriented devices rather than large-scale railroad & air traffic control systems, defense and aerospace systems, etc. Ada certainly has made an effort to convince the large scale, safety critical, long lived community that it has advantages and you see that in a larger percentage of those projects going with Ada. But what about the fast-time-to-market, low-cost, small-scale, who-cares-if-it-has-a-few-glitches, consumer electronics industry? What does Ada do to appeal to that market? (It *could* play a bigger role there, but it has to cater more to that customer by understanding his needs & satisfying them.) 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:zKQg7.10632$2u.76196@www.newsranger.com... > One of the more respectable industry survery numbers he mentioned put Ada at > %10. That's obviously not a majority, but neither is it an insignificant number > that can be freely ignored, like he goes on to imply. > > Then again, about %10 of all people are left handed like me, but everyone > building manually-manipuated objects acts like we don't exist either. So its not > like this annoying attitude is unique to this one author, or even programming > languages in general. > ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic @ 2001-08-21 21:46 ` Wes Groleau 2001-08-22 18:16 ` Jerry Petrey 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Wes Groleau @ 2001-08-21 21:46 UTC (permalink / raw) > >In embedded systems: ADA [sic] is used less than Forth ? > >http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010813S0073 > > That was a reader survey. In the article he comes right out and says this isn't > even close to scientific. He even points out some places where their numbers are And upon looking around, I found another page where they had a survey that put Ada on top. They "pulled it" because "obviously there was something wrong with our methods." To ensure better results, they assigned the job to Gaansle. Who managed to get Ada on the bottom. Looks like the picked the right guy for the job they wanted? Not that I am claiming Ada is really on top, but I kind of doubt it's on the bottom, either. Just that the attitude that they APPEAR to have guarantees bogus results. -- Wes Groleau http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-08-21 21:46 ` Wes Groleau @ 2001-08-22 18:16 ` Jerry Petrey 2 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Jerry Petrey @ 2001-08-22 18:16 UTC (permalink / raw) Ted Dennison wrote: > > In article <3B82CD0B.4A551A42@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com>, Wes Groleau says... > > > > > >In embedded systems: ADA [sic] is used less than Forth ? > >http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010813S0073 > > That was a reader survey. In the article he comes right out and says this isn't > even close to scientific. He even points out some places where their numbers are > horribly at odds with more scientific polls. > > I'd be more interested in Jerry Petry's opinion of his charactarization of Forth > vs. Ada, as he's a fan of both languages (whereas this guy obviously isn't). > > --- > T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html > home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com I couldn't resist Ted. I have had two articles published in ESP, one on Forth in 1989 and one on Ada in 1995. After each, when I proposed a follow up article, I was told by the editor that they did not want to publish 'too many' articles on languages other than C or C++ because they didn't want to 'offend' their readers and advertisers - most of whom they considered C and C++ fans. Jack Ganssle is one of their writers who has such a strong bias against both Forth and Ada (which he can't even spell correctly). I used to work for Forth, Inc. which was founded by the inventor of Forth, Chuck Moore. It is still run by the world's second Forth programmer, Elizabeth Rather. I used Forth a lot in the 1980's and designed and taught some Forth classes. I was always impressed by its power and simplicity. You could do so much with so little memory. The whole Forth system with compiler, editor, assembler, debugger would fit in less than 20K bytes on the target and you could develop and interactively test your application on the target over a serial link from a terminal or PC. It was especially great for testing out new hardware. You could write quick routines to repeatedly exercise certain parts of the hardware so you sync up a scope and really see what was happening. At Forth, Inc., we helped FedEX implement their handheld package scanner in Forth after they had failed to get it to work using C. We implemented a complete airport control system in the Middle East with some 400 processors all running Forth. It is still used a lot more today than people realize (such as in the boot PROMs of Sun workstations) but like Ada it is more of a competitive secret and embedded in things where you wouldn't be aware of the language used. When I first started looking at Ada in the late 80's, I was similarly impressed with its power and simplicity. Even though Forth and Ada were vastly different, I saw some similarities in the Forth philosophy and the Ada philosophy. In Forth, although it was not enforced by the language, we used a component programming approach where you would define interface words (a word is like a subprogram) and implementation words. You could build an application where the underlying implementation could be changed (faster algorithm or even re-coded in Forth's in-line assembler) and the users would not be affected as long as they adhered to the interface. By proper choice of names of words, Forth could even be made quite readable - in spite of its popular criticism to the contrary). For example, the top level application for a washing machine control might be: : Washing_Machine Wash Delay_1 Rinse Delay_2 Spin Delay_3 Stop ; The : starts a definition (and the incremental compiler) and the ; ends it. The first word is the name of the procedure and the remaining words are lower level words previously defined. These words would control the actual hardware - motors, relays, timers, etc. Forth is very useful for smaller microprocessors with limited resources such as older RAD hardened processors used in space and military applications. Ada is my choice for large applications. I wish it was available on smaller 8-bit processors as well but I'm certainly glad that Forth almost always is. Jerry -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Jerry Petrey -- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation, Guidance, & Control -- Raytheon Missile Systems - Member Team Ada & Team Forth -- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Comment on Ada usage 2001-08-21 21:05 Comment on Ada usage Wes Groleau 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison @ 2001-08-21 21:29 ` Marin David Condic 1 sibling, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Marin David Condic @ 2001-08-21 21:29 UTC (permalink / raw) As with most surveys, I suppose it depends on how you do the counting. Suppose you credit 4-bit and 8-bit computers as "Embedded Computers" and treat installed volume as the basis for determining the popularity of the programming language. Since there are a really large number of really small microcontrollers showing up in just about everything, that could make the numbers look very different. In those small machines things like C and probably Forth are going to be real popular - does Ada even play in that arena? Assembler might rank high for a number of these devices - but for anything compiled, you need a fairly small language and I don't think Ada is a good fit there. Apparently the compiler writers agree because they're staying away from that market in droves. While I'd like to see Ada available for really small machines, I don't know that its ever been done. That would account for an enormously large amount of disinterest in Ada within that world. You've probably got to get to 16-bit embedded machines (fewer out there than 4 & 8 bit) before Ada even shows up on the horizon and you've got to get to 32-bit embeded machines (fewer still) before Ada starts having lots of implementations. You can't totally ignore a market and then whine that the players in that market don't like your product. Go after the market or conceed the territory to C - but don't complain that embedded programmers don't go for Ada unless you're there to play the game. Given where Embedded.Com is coming from, I don't doubt that the numbers are somewhere close to accurate. 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/ "Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message news:3B82CD0B.4A551A42@sparc01.ftw.rsc.raytheon.com... > > In embedded systems: ADA [sic] is used less than Forth ? > http://www.embedded.com/story/OEG20010813S0073 > > -- > Wes Groleau > http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2001-08-22 18:16 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 2001-08-21 21:05 Comment on Ada usage Wes Groleau 2001-08-21 21:20 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-21 21:40 ` Marin David Condic 2001-08-22 16:04 ` Ted Dennison 2001-08-22 16:33 ` Marin David Condic 2001-08-21 21:46 ` Wes Groleau 2001-08-22 18:16 ` Jerry Petrey 2001-08-21 21:29 ` Marin David Condic
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