Re: Future with Ada

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

I'm basically with you here and have argued in this forum in the past that
Ada should have more "standard" libraries. Some work is being done in the
area of data structures - hopefully that much could become a de facto
standard if not a de jure standard.

I agree that it would be nice to have a large library of stuff just as does
Java. In particular, some version of a standard GUI library of some sort.
One of the problems with doing this is that Ada targets a whole slew of
computers not all of which would have such a library make sense. Even for
the platforms for which something like a GUI does make sense, you still
might have problems specifying something that is portable and still makes
reasonably good use of what is actually available on the given platform.
Windows GUI stuff, for example, looks very different from what you get under
Motif. Would a "standard" GUI library be able to work on both without
restricting itself to some unacceptable subset of what is possible? Would
Windows programmers/users want something that didn't look a lot like a
typical Windows app? (GtkAda works in a variety of places, but it doesn't
seem to look a lot like "Windows" when its on that platform. Is that going
to be a handicap?)

So I think there is a problem with getting large libraries of stuff
"standardized" in Ada. To get it into The Real Standard, it would have to a)
reduce itself to the lowest common denominators for the platforms on which
it was possible and b) exist as an optional annex so it could be eliminated
for platforms on which it was difficult or impossible to implement. (I don't
see "b" as being a big problem - but there may be other opinions on that...)

The other alternative - a de facto standard - might be a better choice. For
example, you could have a "Windows-GUI" library and a "Motif-GUI" library
that assumed the capabilities of a given platform and compiler vendors would
have to come to some kind of agreement that if they were putting out a
Windows targeted compiler that they would support the appropriate "standard"
library. But this, in and of itself, has problems. It creates portability
between compilers - but that's not necessarily in the interest of the
vendors and may not be that interesting to the consumers. It certainly
doesn't provide portability across platforms - which might be of varying
levels of interest to the consumers.

Besides, no matter how much discussion there is around here about the need
for semi-standard libraries, we never seem to hear anything from the vendors
indicating that they are at all amenable to the idea. If they won't get
behind it, the issue is dead. We already have lots of libraries of Ada code
available for the cost of a download, but that leaves the end-user bumbling
around, cobbling together a development environment of dubious quality and
consistency. Not to mention that it isn't a "standard" then - or maybe its
in the mode of: "Standards are such a wonderful thing that everyone wants
one of their very own!" :-)

So I'm not sure how to get there other than by doing what is happening in
one small corner of this newsgroup with respect to the idea of an Ada
Standard Components Library: If a group of interested parties gang up on a
given problem space and produce a reasonably good library that they are
willing to put in the public domain, it might stand a chance. If there is
some reasonable level of consensus that it is "The Right Thing" or "Good
Enough" and finds some following, then *maybe* the vendors will get behind
it and distribute it. But that's a big "maybe".

If Ada were owned by Sun or Microsoft, it might get the funding to produce
some large standard libraries for at least the platforms targeted by either
of those giants. If Ada had not been "abandoned" by the DoD, it is
conceivable that they might have thrown some big $$$ at developing some
"standard" libraries. (Indeed, they were the source of some of the numerous,
disparate, bits-and-pieces libraries that are out on the Internet today.)
But without the deep pockets and/or the will/direction to Make It So
(expressed by the vendors and/or SIGAda?) I don't see much chance of it
happening.

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/


"Mark Lundquist" <no.spam@getalife.com> wrote in message
news:oN5S7.47886$Yy.536849@rwcrnsc53...
> languages.  The big library philosophy won (and if I may add, rightly so
> IMHO).  I feel it will be best for Ada if the maintainers of the language
> lose any hangups they may have over this (I don't know if they have any or
> not), e.g. any lingering sensitivity to 80's criticism of Ada as "too big"
a
> language.  People are used to thinking of a "core language" + "standard
> library", and they expect the library to be big.  They understand the
> difference between that and a huge core language.
>