Re: Future with Ada

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

An Ada OS that rode inside of a STB would be a little like MS-DOS riding
along inside of IBM-PCs. Millions of these units are going to be sold and
they start to blend the difference between your TV set and your home
computer. Right now the OS that rides around in a lot of these boxes isn't
terribly more sophisticated than MS-DOS - well maybe it has a lot more
features, but I don't think the sophistication or reliability is there.
Certainly not like you see in Windows NT or Linux. (And yes, NT is a *lot*
more reliable than the OS I've got humming around in my STB at the moment.)
Could you imagine what the world for Ada would look like if MS-DOS had been
written in Ada? Or Windows 3.1 had its API specified in Ada? I think that's
pretty much the kind of opportunity that exists here.

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/

<tmoran@acm.org> wrote in message news:KDtU7.15329$NM4.3204765@rwcrnsc53...
> > Personally, I think that Ada could do well by finding its way into the
> > Digital TV Set Top Box because its an area that isn't already "owned" by
> > some other language. Because its relatively new, no one language has any
> > sort of huge toolset that makes it impossible to replace without a
billion
>   So perhaps, instead of an angel to fund development of a huge toolset,
> we need an angel to fund some new application, like set top boxes, where
> Ada has the advantages, and not the disadvantages.