Re: Garbage Collection in Ada

[jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <dewar.845559025@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> "Fair enough.  But then, I find it hard to believe that implmementing
> all the annexes had that level of payback either.  Except for the fact
> that you can claim to fully support the entire RM (another good reason
> why GC annex may have been nice :-).  Think about it, for example, the
> DSA is a fine and wonderful thing but I can get everything it offers
> in commercially available CORBA based ORBs supporting Ada95.  Not so a
> GC...)"
> 
> Nope, that is wrong, we see clear evidence (real $$ coming in!) of 
> significant commercial interest in the distribution annex. We are not
> implementing it for our own amusement, or because we hope people might
> be interested. The original work was kicked off by a large company
> providing resources, and since then, other serious big customers have
> been very interested (interest = $$$, not CLA posts) in this feature!

You're being sloppy - you mean I may be part wrong in claiming that
implementing all the annexes may not have had "that level of payback".
I am clearly not wrong in claiming Orbix/Ada offers functionally
everything (and more) than the DSA.  I can guarantee that.  I had the
choice and have opted for the ORB.  Further, I am not wrong in stating
that I don't have this sort of option for GC.


> P.S. Jon is definitely a customer, my comment about it often being the
> case that people are looking for something they can use free was not
> meant to imply otherwise :-)

Check!

> Of course he is NOT an example of someone not using Ada because it
> does not have GC. Now if Jon said he were switching all his
> development from Ada to Java solely because Java had GC, that would
> be interesting, or at least it would be interesting if it were a
> trend!

It would indeed.  Mostly because it would make no sense as I have
pointed out in many other posts.  Now, I _could_ sensibly claim that I
am switching to Eiffel or SmallTalk because they are expected to have
GC (and all available impls do) and Ada impls typically don't.  But
I'm not, because while GC is (IMO) very important it is not important
enough to offset all the other advantages of Ada over those two.  Not
by quite a bit.  For example, in general (and for us in particular) a
solid high level portable tasking model is far more important.

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com