* Re: hypothetical question [not found] <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au> @ 2001-07-05 15:53 ` Ted Dennison 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 18:01 ` chris.danx 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2001-07-05 15:53 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au>, Karl Fitz says... > >in my random thoughts as a 'newbie' programmer, >I begin to wonder the possibillity of creating an Operating System entirely >with ada. Or would it be better to use a variety of programming languages... >many questions arise from this but it intruiges me, Ada is a systems-programming language, and thus theoretcily well-suited for the task of OS development. It has been done in the past. Outside of those two statements, I don't have anything new to add that you couldn't find by going to groups.google.com and looking through the many posts made on this same subject in the last couple of weeks. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question [not found] <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au> 2001-07-05 15:53 ` hypothetical question Ted Dennison @ 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 16:10 ` Al Christians ` (2 more replies) 2001-07-05 18:01 ` chris.danx 2 siblings, 3 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 2001-07-05 16:51 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au>, "Karl Fitz" <vampyre_16@hotmail.com> writes: > in my random thoughts as a 'newbie' programmer, > I begin to wonder the possibillity of creating an Operating System entirely > with ada. Or would it be better to use a variety of programming languages... > many questions arise from this but it intruiges me, > would it be more/less, stable (as a compasion to other Os) ? > '' '' '' , resource hungry.... ? > Im sure that it is entirely possible but i guess the real question is .... > would it be practical ? It would certainly be practical, but the initial creation would not be any cheaper than creating a new operating system in _any_ language. The cost of creating an operating system is extremely high - ask Microsoft or IBM. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 2001-07-05 16:10 ` Al Christians 2001-07-06 1:05 ` B. Douglas Hilton 2001-07-06 21:41 ` Bobby D. Bryant 2 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Al Christians @ 2001-07-05 16:10 UTC (permalink / raw) Larry Kilgallen wrote: > > The cost of creating an operating system is extremely high - ask > Microsoft or IBM. But you should be able to do it for the odd $billion or less. If you can add another $billion to develop a few desktop apps and come up with a company that is in the top 10 worldwide in market value, that's extremely cheap. This is a very lucrative opportunity awaiting funding. Ada would be a good choice for a project like that. Al ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 16:10 ` Al Christians @ 2001-07-06 1:05 ` B. Douglas Hilton 2001-07-06 14:14 ` Ted Dennison 2001-07-06 21:41 ` Bobby D. Bryant 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: B. Douglas Hilton @ 2001-07-06 1:05 UTC (permalink / raw) Hey, don't overlook Hurd! Its a microkernel + multiserver OS like QNX which currently uses the gnuMach microkernel. Functionally it is very similar to older versions of Debian GNU/Linux. My goal is to replace gnuMach with a compatible microkernel written in Ada, use it to boot the Hurd, and then replace the C-Hurd with Ada-Hurd translators at my leisure. The end result would be a rock solid OS that is binary compatible with all the Hurd packages written in whatever language they are written in. It would be a bad idea to get rid of the gcc libc because so much great old software is made for it and c hasn't died yet. There's no point in re-writing an OS because GNU has all the features you'd ever want or need. All you need is an Ada microkernel to start the migration. Use GNU as your OS, just make it work with an Ada kernel and we will blow away the Windoze world in no time. Imagine how cool it would be if the Linux kernel was written in Ada.... but the Hurd is even cooler still! What Linux did ( and we should be thankful ) is bring the GNU OS to the people. There is no learning curve from a user's perspective from going from GNU/Linux to GNU/Hurd because it is the same set of UNIX-like programs that we use. It has BASH, ls, cp, mv, ln, startx, etc. Use Linux to learn GNU, then help GNU grow away from just one kernel. In some ways, Linus sort of inherited a full-blown UNIX OS when he wrote his kernel, but keep in mind that it was thousands of university students that wrote the GNU operating system, and those c-programs are not the same thing as the Linux kernel. I don't mean to be ripping on Linux, because I'm using a state of the art Linux system to post this message, but I personally can't understand the kernel because it has grown so huge, and I always like to promote worthy new projects to keep the competition fierce! Cheers, - Doug Larry Kilgallen wrote: > In article <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au>, "Karl Fitz" <vampyre_16@hotmail.com> writes: > > in my random thoughts as a 'newbie' programmer, > > I begin to wonder the possibillity of creating an Operating System entirely > > with ada. Or would it be better to use a variety of programming languages... > > many questions arise from this but it intruiges me, > > would it be more/less, stable (as a compasion to other Os) ? > > '' '' '' , resource hungry.... ? > > Im sure that it is entirely possible but i guess the real question is .... > > would it be practical ? > > It would certainly be practical, but the initial creation would not > be any cheaper than creating a new operating system in _any_ language. > The cost of creating an operating system is extremely high - ask > Microsoft or IBM. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-06 1:05 ` B. Douglas Hilton @ 2001-07-06 14:14 ` Ted Dennison 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Ted Dennison @ 2001-07-06 14:14 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <3B450EE0.8FC6D60D@engineer.com>, B. Douglas Hilton says... > > There's no point in re-writing an OS because GNU has all the features you'd >ever want or need. All you need is an Ada microkernel to start the migration. Well, it doesn't support real-time. There is supposedly a RT-MACH out there. It'd be interesting to see what could be done with that. --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 16:10 ` Al Christians 2001-07-06 1:05 ` B. Douglas Hilton @ 2001-07-06 21:41 ` Bobby D. Bryant 2001-07-07 10:54 ` Larry Kilgallen 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Bobby D. Bryant @ 2001-07-06 21:41 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <cScfJwUl$Roy@eisner.encompasserve.org>, "Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote: > It would certainly be practical, but the initial creation would not be > any cheaper than creating a new operating system in _any_ language. However, we'd all like to think that the even-more-expensive task of *maintaining* an OS would be cheaper if the OS were developed in Ada. Bobby Bryant Austin, Texas ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-06 21:41 ` Bobby D. Bryant @ 2001-07-07 10:54 ` Larry Kilgallen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 2001-07-07 10:54 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <9i6lkf$bqi$2@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu>, "Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@mail.utexas.edu> writes: > In article <cScfJwUl$Roy@eisner.encompasserve.org>, "Larry Kilgallen" > <Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam> wrote: > > >> It would certainly be practical, but the initial creation would not be >> any cheaper than creating a new operating system in _any_ language. > > However, we'd all like to think that the even-more-expensive task of > *maintaining* an OS would be cheaper if the OS were developed in Ada. But the tough part is getting to the start of the maintenance phase :-) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question [not found] <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au> 2001-07-05 15:53 ` hypothetical question Ted Dennison 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 2001-07-05 18:01 ` chris.danx 2001-07-05 21:51 ` Robert Dewar 2 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: chris.danx @ 2001-07-05 18:01 UTC (permalink / raw) > in my random thoughts as a 'newbie' programmer, > I begin to wonder the possibillity of creating an Operating System entirely > with ada. Or would it be better to use a variety of programming languages... > many questions arise from this but it intruiges me, > would it be more/less, stable (as a compasion to other Os) ? Stability is dependant on design, the language used only affects predictability and correctness which do effect stability. Ada has strong typing, and a lot of compile time checks, so this would improve predictability and correctness but only to a point. So Ada does improve stability but will only succeed with good design. Also you can't just do an OS in Ada, at some point there has to be some Asm though it may just be one or two lines to invoke task switching etc. > '' '' '' , resource hungry.... ? T o me this isn't really a language issue, it's an implementation one. This is two fold, the implementation of the compiler and the implementation of the OS. It does you no good having a compiler that has efficient resource management if your OS design is resource hungry. Careful design is necessary to avoid a resource hungry OS, which isn't easy. (As far as I know most Ada compilers are quite good with resource management). > Im sure that it is entirely possible but i guess the real question is .... > would it be practical ? Of course it's practical (if you allow for a little asm, if not then NO!). It's just difficult, and it will take a long time. > I also ponder this... is there one 'better' programming language... > and how can you compare them..... It's a personal thing, isn't it? To me Ada is really good for some things but falls down when it comes to others. It's the right tool for the job philosophy. So no, there isn't "one 'better' programming language", there is only one for a particular developer for a particular job. example: Haskell/OCaml -- Compilers (in FP compilers are simpler to write, or so i'm told) Ada -- App programming/OS work Chris ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-05 18:01 ` chris.danx @ 2001-07-05 21:51 ` Robert Dewar 2001-07-06 10:32 ` chris.danx 0 siblings, 1 reply; 10+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 2001-07-05 21:51 UTC (permalink / raw) "chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message news:<TW117.4820$Jk6.1116376@news2-win.server.ntlworld.com>... > Also you can't just do an OS in Ada, at some point there has to be > some Asm though it may just be one or two lines to invoke task > switching etc. nope, once you have your low level Ada compiler bootstrapped then you can do the operating system task switching entirely in terms of Ada task switching. Thinking you have to use ASM to do task switching is exactly like thinking you have to use ASM to do a hardware addition. Yes, there is a bootstrap problem, but given Ada compilers on other machines, that is easily solvable. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
* Re: hypothetical question 2001-07-05 21:51 ` Robert Dewar @ 2001-07-06 10:32 ` chris.danx 0 siblings, 0 replies; 10+ messages in thread From: chris.danx @ 2001-07-06 10:32 UTC (permalink / raw) > > Also you can't just do an OS in Ada, at some point there has to be > > some Asm though it may just be one or two lines to invoke task > > switching etc. > > nope, once you have your low level Ada compiler bootstrapped then > you can do the operating system task switching entirely in terms > of Ada task switching. Thinking you have to use ASM to do task > switching is exactly like thinking you have to use ASM to do a > hardware addition. Yes, there is a bootstrap problem, but given > Ada compilers on other machines, that is easily solvable. I didn't know that, thanks. Chris ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 10+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2001-07-07 10:54 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 10+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- [not found] <3b448a6d@news.iprimus.com.au> 2001-07-05 15:53 ` hypothetical question Ted Dennison 2001-07-05 16:51 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 16:10 ` Al Christians 2001-07-06 1:05 ` B. Douglas Hilton 2001-07-06 14:14 ` Ted Dennison 2001-07-06 21:41 ` Bobby D. Bryant 2001-07-07 10:54 ` Larry Kilgallen 2001-07-05 18:01 ` chris.danx 2001-07-05 21:51 ` Robert Dewar 2001-07-06 10:32 ` chris.danx
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