Re: ada and robots

[jsa@alexandria.organon.com (Jon S Anthony)]

> memory correctly.  Ada95 is claimed to be better, but I don't have
> any direct experience with it.

Significantly better.  Quite different.


> Actually, not many people do just yet.

Au contrair - many are using it.

Get it _free_ if you like (binaries for most everything) at

ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/gnat/

> I suspect that most people are using C (perhaps called from Ada) for
> direct control of I/O hardware and the like.

Well, that's also quite possible as Ada95 provides out of the box
standard built in connection to C (and Fortran).

> Not all Ada compilers offer adequate support for such mixed-language

All Ada95 compilers do.

> VxWorks system, let alone execute the code and debug.  Insisting on a true
> and accurate demo saved our butts.)

Sound enough advice.  You can check this for yourself with Ada95 via
the free (industrial strength, I might add) compilers mentioned above.


> likely cause the Ada compiler and tools market to shrink to perhaps as
> little as one tenth of its prior size, and that significant added
> investment in Ada compilers and tools is therefore unlikely, at least

Nothing like good ol' FUD.  These 1/10's and 1/100's are just pulled
from where the sun doesn't shine.  Where are the studies?  Quote them
please.


> until the size of the remaining market becomes clear.  A significant
> shrink is widely expected

By who (or is that "whom"?)?  In any event, the opposite has seemed to
have been happening.  This is largely the result of free and cheap
compilers with full typical Windoze IDEs - check Aonix for example:
http://www.thomsoft.com/Products/Ada/ada.html

Also, only in the land of software would anyone actually suggest that
one should not use a better tool, technique, process, whatever to
build your product, because most of your _competition_ is using the
inferior tool, technique, process, whatever.


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