Re: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

["Richard Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net>]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:1086630278.542788@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
>
> In absolute terms. Linux systems, as well as BSD systems which
> are also written in C, stay up for long periods of time and work
> as they are supposed to. Various pieces are always being reworked
> and enhanced, apparently without much difficulty.

There is no reason why someone could not write an OS in Ada. There
is some reason to wonder whether this would be a good use of
programmer resources given the current state of the market for
Operating Systems.   C and C++ can be, and have been, used with
comparitively good success in writing Operating Systems.  Expert
programmers can do good work in nearly any language, even Ada,
Eiffel, D, Forth, Pascal, Assembler, or [your favorite goes here].

The operating systems written in C or C++ are well-known to be
vulnerable to security violations, some of which are directly related
to features of the languages in which they are written.  Those identical
violations would be impossible for an OS written in Ada.

On the other hand, one cannot predict what vulnerabilities would
be discovered for an OS written in Ada.  I have no doubt there
would be some vulnerabilities.  Would they be as severe as those
in OS's written in the C family of languages?  No one can answer
that for certain.

I happen to prefer Ada over C++ for most things.  The more time
I spend with C++ (alas, I am forced to do so part of the time) the
more I dislike it.   This is a personal preference, but one derived from
experience.  Ada too has features I dislike, but not as many of them
as C++.    So far, I have not discovered the perfect (or even the
ideal) programming language that fits every situation.   I don't expect
to during my few remaining years as a carbon-based, oxygen breathing
organism.

Richard Riehle