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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,df52cf364e9edc0a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-07 14:07:02 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!purdue!haven.umd.edu!news.umbc.edu!eff!blanket.mitre.org!linus.mitre.org!linus!mbunix!emery From: emery@goldfinger.mitre.org (David Emery) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is DoD simulation ignoring using Ada????? Date: 7 Dec 94 13:14:41 Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA. Message-ID: References: <9412071642.AA02438@eight-ball.hv.boeing.com.hv.boeing.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: goldfinger.mitre.org In-reply-to: Bob Crispen's message of Wed, 7 Dec 1994 10:42:35 CST Date: 1994-12-07T13:14:41+00:00 List-Id: >Developing Ada bindings isn't rocket science; it's well within the >capabilities of somebody with a year or two of Ada experience. Oh, I beg to differ. There's an art to doing bindings. I've seen (been victimized) by Ada bindings developed by junior people. Right now I'm trying to rework some bindings that fit that pattern. The guy did a nice job given his level of experience, but there are some serious problems that affect both usage and implementation. Part of the problem is developing/defining the binding so that it is not tightly coupled to the specific execution environment/compiler. It's easy to crank out a couple of 'pragma interface (C)', but very painful to move such a binding to another compiler. Another issue is preventing storage leaks. Of course, if the underlying C interface is lousy, there's a limit to how well the Ada binding can hide warts and flaws in the C interface. The 'art' comes in knowing what/how/when/why to encapsulate. After all, Ada bindings should NOT resembe C header files (if they do, there's no reason to do Ada.), and the art is in figuring out the best way to identify and represent the underlying abstractions in Ada. My 10 years of experience doing Ada bindings says that experience has been the best teacher in this regard. (How's that for self-referential...) But, with the right skills and expeience, a good engineer can crank out a high-quality Ada binding in a (relatively) short amount of time. And my experience has been that the cost of doing a high-quality Ada binding is very quickly recovered by savings in debug time, etc. Part of the art of doing Ada bindings is to detect/prevent errors before they get into C, and produce segmentation faults. And, remember that the number of users >> the nubmer of authors for Ada bindings (and interfaces in general.) So, Ada bindings are a good place for your best technical people, and often a cost-effective project for consultants. But don't use this as a way to train junior people, or you'll suffer the consequences for the life of the project. dave -- --The preceeding opinions do not necessarily reflect the opinions of --The MITRE Corporation or its sponsors. -- "A good plan violently executed -NOW- is better than a perfect plan -- next week" George Patton -- "Any damn fool can write a plan. It's the execution that gets you -- all screwed up" James Hollingsworth -------------------------------------------------------------------------