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

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
>  > Today's slashdot points out yet another exploit in Linux.
>  > http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/04/1212228&mode=thread&tid=1-
>  > 26&tid=95
>  > We like to deride Windows, but Linux, *NIX in general all suffer from
>  >  the same problem. Some of these are no doubt due to design issues
>  > (which Ada may or may not help with). But surely, one has to
>  > wonder/hope if/that some other fundamental change (language) can
>  > offer an improvement. I think many are simply saying that they
>  > believe it to be so.
> 
> Developing an operating system - any operating system - is inherently
> complex and extremely difficult to get right. Most of the flaws are
> *not* going to come from array bounds or integer range check problems.
> They come from logic problems or timing problems. I know from experience
> that an asynchronous world is extremely difficult to live in and get
> right. The logic an OS goes through to schedule multiple processes and
> handle shared I/O, etc., are all just inherently hard to get right.
> Coding up an OS in Ada might eliminate some flaws - but they are far
> from the worst flaws that an OS can have.

Generally agreed. I think you would also agree that Ada forces
the writer to engineer the project better. You are forced to
do more planning with Ada. Compared this with C, where you
can always pass around void pointers, etc. to work around
things that you forgot to design for.

I would further add that Ada code can tolerate more static
analysis, which is pretty much useless or impossible in C.
Static analysis not only saves time testing, but gives you
greater confidence in the results.

> All the necessary tools exist. There's a free compiler, IDE, debugger, 
> GUI builder, etc., needed to go write apps in Ada. (I wish they were 
> better integrated, standardized and came with a library, but if we keep 
> waiting for perfection, we'll never be ready.) We can't say "it would be 
> better done in Ada..." now without asking ourselves why we aren't doing 
> it. We will look like fools or cranks to the rest of the world if we 
> keep pissing on their real-world, in-existence apps unless we can 
> actually come up with something that is *better* to put next to it and 
> say "See?!?! The one I built in *Ada* actually *is* better!!!" I can't 
> download and run conceptual vaporware that is only theoretically better. 
> ;-)
> 
> MDC

Yep, but you need bodies of people willing to help. One or
a few individuals can put together an operating system, but
unless many people contribute towards hardward drivers, the
project is not likely to gain general acceptance (at least
on Intel). But even this, is an untested theory, in the
Ada OS arena so far. ;-)
-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg