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=1.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FROM_WORDY, INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5f8432149982f35e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fca1b,5f8432149982f35e X-Google-Attributes: gidfca1b,public From: "Ken Garlington" Subject: Re: Ada and QNX Date: 2000/10/16 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 682049643 References: <8r1i82$ri3$1@kujawiak.man.lodz.pl> <8r5pe5$h70$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8FCDFD7EEnopenopena@63.209.170.206> <39EA6305.CD5CFE1F@ix.netcom.com> <39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com> X-Priority: 3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4133.2400 X-Complaints-To: abuse@flash.net X-Trace: news.flash.net 971702884 216.215.73.111 (Mon, 16 Oct 2000 08:28:04 CDT) Organization: FlashNet Communications, http://www.flash.net X-MSMail-Priority: Normal NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2000 08:28:04 CDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.os.qnx Date: 2000-10-16T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Igor Kovalenko" wrote in message news:39EA9161.6469DDE2@home.com... [snip] > Oh, yeah. I bought Ada book some years ago. So many capabilities. Couple > hundred pages worth of docs printed in small-font. An odd metric... My copy of "Standard C" by Plauger and Brodie is 207 pages of fairly small font. > If someone manages to > a) write a good compiler for that (portable and with runtime-efficient > code) GNAT appears to be fairly portable (at least, it's available on a number of hosts). Without knowing what the precise definition of "efficient" is in this context, I can't say if there's a compiler that meets your needs in that respect. It's certainly been used in hard real-time embedded environments, which is a pretty good operational definition of "efficient". > and b) somehow teach programmers to understand the whole damn > thing, then yes it might resurrect. I haven't seen any problems in this area in my organization. > Even then, I have doubts personally. > Ada is way too high and abstract to be good for system level programming > (even C++ is too high). I'm trying to think of a low-level construct available in C, but not Ada, that would be used for system level programming, and I'm drawing a blank. Bit-level operations? Pointer manipulation? Interrupt management? I've done all those in Ada without any difficulty. > And yet it is not as portable and distributable > as Java to be good for new-age applications. Since Ada can run on the JVM, how could it be less portable or distributable? > Plus, it smells too much > like Pascal and that turns me down immediately. Now I think you're on to something. Too many programmers have the "secret handshake" syndrome: They want to use languages that are inscrutable to the unwashed non-programmer. > Of course, those are > just my humble personal opinions, I know that others will disagree and I > don't say that those opinions are absolute right. > > In any case I don't think that pissing into C++ pool will do any good > for Ada. At best it might just serve you as a good way to kill time > until a) and b) is done. "a) and b)" are not the problem. Ada's troubles are not technology related. Ada's troubles come from poor marketing earlier in its history -- too many vendors making too many mistakes. The worst performers are gone now, but they left behind bitter feelings in a lot of potential users.