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: 103376,8623fab5750cd6aa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!newshub.sdsu.edu!cyclone.bc.net!news-in.mts.net!nf1.bellglobal.com!nf2.bellglobal.com!news20.bellglobal.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada BIND was: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics References: <40b9c99e$0$268$edfadb0f@dread16.news.tele.dk> <1086715817.122983@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1086733411.736049@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3Auxc.11998$XY6.1296622@read2.cgocable.net> <40C85035.4020706@noplace.com> <40CA0032.3010103@noplace.com> <40CAF0E1.4000904@noplace.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:43:31 -0400 NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.223.163 X-Complaints-To: abuse@sympatico.ca X-Trace: news20.bellglobal.com 1087231410 198.96.223.163 (Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:43:30 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 12:43:30 EDT Organization: Bell Sympatico Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1475 Date: 2004-06-14T12:43:31-04:00 List-Id: Russ wrote: > Marin David Condic wrote in message news:<40CAF0E1.4000904@noplace.com>... > >>While I'm a believer in Ada, I don't think that coding an app up in Ada >>somehow makes it *better* just by that very fact. Nobody buys programs >>just because it says "Ada Inside" - so its important to add something >>more. Given limited resources, it would seem more productive to come up >>with something new and innovative rather than take existing apps and >>recode them in Ada just to have an Ada version. > > You seem to assume that the "recoding in Ada" is a labor-intensive > manual process. But what if it could be automated? I'm an aerospace > engineer, and I don't know much about automated C-to-Ada conversion, > but I think its at least worth consdering. Certainly the resulting Ada > code would have *some* of the benefits of Ada. It is, because it needs to include "software engineering" as well. If were simply a matter of using one compiler or another, Ada would offer no advantage. But an engineered to use Ada approach, offers many advantages. For example: If you translate values in C to Ada numeric constants, you have just translated from C to Ada, with nothing gained. If you develop an enumeration type in Ada (replacing C constants), then case statements can be flagged for missing or incorrect cases etc. > I understand that a crappy design will still be a crappy design even > in Ada, but if the original C application works reasonably well, > perhaps the automated Ada conversion could be manually tweaked to > improve security, reliability, or some other aspect. That certainly > seems like a more attractive option than manually rewriting the whole > thing. The point is, people don't feel safe with the exploits that keep coming up in BIND. Not to crap on anybody's C work in BIND, but some folks think Ada _can_ offer better, if the project is properly executed. I for one, think it is worth trying. > Speaking of crappy designs, I sense some disdain for Linux here > because it is written it C. You're reading too much into it. Linux is great IMHO. I have it running on 7 machines at home (only 2 instances of M$ remain at home). Yet, I don't look at Linux in a religious way. I am willing to admit that the evidence suggests that it is less than secure (hence the continuous crop of exploit notices!) Let's all recognize that M$ has their own problems as well. If I were contracted to provide a safe/secure *NIX solution to a university, I'd have some headscrating to do. This is because Linux's root privilege is so frequently obtained by unprivileged users. Other *NIX's have problems in this area too, though each brand has its differing levels of security. None are immune from what I can see. -- Warren W. Gay VE3WWG http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg