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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,c1983ae2deb642ab X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-05-25 14:52:04 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!iad-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!bpr.best.vwh.net!bpr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Brian Rogoff Subject: Re: Ada -vs- GNAT In-Reply-To: <_IQH8.462$II3.79467548@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com> Message-ID: References: <5ee5b646.0205250258.7502fb36@posting.google.com> <_IQH8.462$II3.79467548@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 21:52:00 +0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.220.65.223 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: iad-read.news.verio.net 1022363312 192.220.65.223 (Sat, 25 May 2002 21:48:32 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 21:48:32 GMT Organization: Verio Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:24798 Date: 2002-05-25T21:52:00+00:00 List-Id: On Sat, 25 May 2002 tmoran@acm.org wrote: > > As for portability, you are not doing so badly > > if you make something GNAT dependent, > I do think you should use your "Ada Core Technologies" signature when > making a statement with such a clear financial impact. I don't think so. You could replace the context with C and GCC instead of Ada and GNAT, and I think it would still be true. He didn't say there are no drawbacks, just that you aren't in a deep hole, like if you were dependent on some fly by night commercial venture which goes belly up. > > a much more limiting decision is to use packages that are tied to one > > particular machine or proprietary operating systems. > I suppose there are small, specialized markets where that's true. Pretty much the entire electronic design automation market meets your definition of small and specialized. I imagine that similar engineering intensive markets are also like that. > For some programs, being tied to Windows is not a great limitation, however. The kind of programs for which being tied solely to Windows is not a great limitation probably don't benefit that much from Ada, since many of the purported advantages of Ada, like standards conformance, and relative machine independence, are not being utilized. I guess that GNAT wins either way, since it runs on Windows and lots of other OSes, and I can choose to adhere to the standard or not. :-) -- Brian