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

["Robert I. Eachus" <rieachus@comcast.net>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

> "Richard Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:fkyxc.7649$uX2.6475@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> ...
> 
>>We did miss an opportunity back when the DoD was a principle sponsor
>>of the language.   If someone had thought to port the idea of P-Code
>>(now Java bytecode) to Ada so that resulting code would be portable
>>across any system, we might have a different story today.
> 
> 
> I think *everybody* had that idea back then. Certainly, we designed and used
> such a code in Janus/Ada; it's still the primary intermediate form. And we
> had intended to make interpreted versions available on various platforms.
> But the realities of the hardware of the time prevented us from using
> interpreters -- when programs took minutes to get anything done, doubling
> the time simply wasn't acceptable.

Remember that there was an early Ada compiler validated on a hardware 
P-code machine.  (I'm trying to remember the name of David Fisher's 
company, immediately after bought out by Western Digital.)  If they or 
Telesoft, another company with a P-code heritage, had done a good job of 
marketing, they probably could have used Ada to keep P-code alive.

And of course, as I have said, the govenment attempts to build an Ada 
development environment all got hugely bloated and were too big and slow 
for the systems of that day.  For all I know some of that code might 
actually be worth using now, and it still exists. ;-)

-- 

                                           Robert I. Eachus

The ideology he opposed throughout his political life insisted that 
history was moved by impersonal tides and unalterable fates. Ronald 
Reagan believed instead in the courage and triumph of free men and we 
believe it all the more because we saw that courage in him.  -- George 
W. Bush June 11, 2004