periodicity

periodicity

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Nice to see I can come back to comp.lang.ada after an absense of months,
and find exactly the same subjects still/again being discussed.

How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  It is sad to me
that as long as Ada has been around there still isn't enough substantive
discussion to have split off a diversity of forums(*) similar to the
more commercially successful and sought after programming languages.
This  is, after all, a language much older than Java, 2/3rds as old as
C, over 40% as old as Fortran by now; why is half the posting volume
still full of new language angst and defensiveness?

xanthian.

I.e., comp.lang.ada.*, where besides the choices easily researched from
the other language newsgroups, there really should be a
comp.lang.ada.gnat by now, probably with leaf groups of its own.



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Re: periodicity (contents of comp.lang.ada)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <a382a7626f81f2efce1b56bbbb0f35ac.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:
> Nice to see I can come back to comp.lang.ada after an absense of months,
> and find exactly the same subjects still/again being discussed.
> 
> How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  It is sad to me
> that as long as Ada has been around there still isn't enough substantive
> discussion to have split off a diversity of forums(*) similar to the
> more commercially successful and sought after programming languages.

Newsgroup splits in comp.lang.pascal have been quite painful with
lots of misposts and cross-posts.

> This  is, after all, a language much older than Java, 2/3rds as old as
> C, over 40% as old as Fortran by now; why is half the posting volume
> still full of new language angst and defensiveness?

Because new people keep coming to the group with old questions.

> I.e., comp.lang.ada.*, where besides the choices easily researched from
> the other language newsgroups, there really should be a
> comp.lang.ada.gnat by now, probably with leaf groups of its own.

There are several mailing lists related to GNAT which work well.

Re: periodicity

[Pascal Obry]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:

> Nice to see I can come back to comp.lang.ada after an absense of months,
> and find exactly the same subjects still/again being discussed.
> 
> How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  

Good point, what do you have to propose as component, library... ?

> It is sad to me that as long as Ada has been around there still isn't enough
> substantive discussion to have split off a diversity of forums(*) similar to
> the more commercially successful and sought after programming languages.
> This  is, after all, a language much older than Java, 2/3rds as old as
> C, over 40% as old as Fortran by now; why is half the posting volume
> still full of new language angst and defensiveness?

And the kind of post you just made which will certainly be a long thread :)

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--|
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"

libraries for Ada (was): periodicity

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Pascal Obry" <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:
> > How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> > or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> > focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> > and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  
 
> Good point, what do you have to propose as component, library... ?

I suspect each person's choices would be colored by their needs, and I
_know_ I am going to regret getting into this, and I'm _sure_ I'll hear
"but that already exists as (obscure, non-standard hobbiest) library X",
but for starters:

Ports of the IMSL math and statistics libraries.

Libraries of accessor/mapping routines to the various popular kinds of
close coupled, high bandwidth, low per processor capability massively
parallel processors, and same-named adapters for doing the exact same
problems where the underlying hardware is a network of slow
communicating, high capability computers (like SETI at Home).

Pretty much all of Java, most importantly in the Java style of being
well integrated and astonishingly well documented, but compiled instead
of byte-compiled, so that for example students can just sit down and
build GUIed applications using the Ada language "right out of the box".

A (heavy emphasis here, contrasting to the partial implementation of GKS
some years ago in Ada) _full_ implementation of PHIGS or of a freely
licensed RENDERMAN or some similar high tech graphics library, for
photo-realistic animated rendering.  Similarly for animation.

All of the algorithms published as the Graphics Gems series.

A standard set of graph tools for trees, graphs, digraphs, et cetera,
and all the usual operations on them.

A knowledge engineering library with support for the standard knowledge
capture paradigms and structures.

High technology text and word processing component libraries.

Data presentation libraries.

Data mining and indexing component libraries.

Evolutionary algorithms and neural network component libraries.  (I'd be
more than happy to port my recent algorithm inventions here to Ada and
contribute them.)

Data base functionality tightly couple to the Ada language but
supporting e.g. SQL standard protocols.

A game-writing toolkit.  Arguably, in terms of gaining wider acceptance
for Ada, this should be the top priority, as it would attract a crowd of
students and individual freelance programmers, exactly the crowd that
made C a success outside of its original laboratory environment.

Financial management, planning, and estimating tool kits.  Stock market
predicting components (might as well throw in snake oil, it keeps the
snakes well oiled, why not the rest of us?)

Network programming, Web search, and Web presentation technology
libraries.

Essentially, one could take all of the various ACM and IEEE computer
oriented proceedings, start at volume 1 number 1 of each, and work
forward, adding each published algorithm to a library, while
regularizing data representations and such to make the libraries
interoperable.

Lots of other people would have longer, more practical lists.

The points that get buried in list making are that there needs to be a
start, that it needs to be organized, that it needs some hope of
longevity via a sponsor that is more trustworthy than, for example, the
US Military's defunct Ada Mandate, it needs a home from which it will be
accessible, like the WUSTL archives, it needs librarians and indexers
and master programmers to keep it well organized and easy to search for
needed tools, it needs a proofing and filtering input stage where the
community can make contributions and know that they won't just
disappear.

xanthian, "duck and cover" time.

[Did I mention "free"?  It is pretty pointless to price oneself out of
the market when trying to foment a revolution, as Sun does by putting
license fees on commercial use of Java, essentially preventing the
hobbiest from doing a slow transition to commercial success by putting a
huge "first step barrier" in front of the first commercial sale of a
Java product.  Sun got confused about its main goal: preventing
Microsoft from putting Sun out of business by making the OS unimportant
again, and got greedy just when a chance of success was looming large.]


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Re: libraries for Ada (was): periodicity

[Marin David Condic]

Boy, that sure is an ambitious list! :-)

I agree that some standard libraries would be an excellent addition to Ada
and would serve to make it more attractive. However, I'd make the scope a
little narrower in the hope of actually getting it adopted:

Some version of math libraries - including statistics & matrix/vector math.
(Insert your favorite math needs here, but I'd stick to the branches of math
that are most frequently used first. Stats & Linear A seem to be pretty
popular across the board, but there may be others as well.)

Some version of basic data structures. Could we get the GRACE name settled &
maybe see if a reference implementation can find some level of acceptance?

Some version of a GUI - I'd base it on XML & possibly third-party
interpreters. (I hear there's kind of a standards effort to do this at
http://www.mozilla.org/? Or am I mistaken?)

Shoot for that much & I'll bet we have a substantially better language.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:171516c6068daa0fd32844182995dd3b.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
>
> I suspect each person's choices would be colored by their needs, and I
> _know_ I am going to regret getting into this, and I'm _sure_ I'll hear
> "but that already exists as (obscure, non-standard hobbiest) library X",
> but for starters:
>
> Ports of the IMSL math and statistics libraries.
>
> Libraries of accessor/mapping routines to the various popular kinds of
> close coupled, high bandwidth, low per processor capability massively
> parallel processors, and same-named adapters for doing the exact same
> problems where the underlying hardware is a network of slow
> communicating, high capability computers (like SETI at Home).
>
> Pretty much all of Java, most importantly in the Java style of being
> well integrated and astonishingly well documented, but compiled instead
> of byte-compiled, so that for example students can just sit down and
> build GUIed applications using the Ada language "right out of the box".
>
> A (heavy emphasis here, contrasting to the partial implementation of GKS
> some years ago in Ada) _full_ implementation of PHIGS or of a freely
> licensed RENDERMAN or some similar high tech graphics library, for
> photo-realistic animated rendering.  Similarly for animation.
>
> All of the algorithms published as the Graphics Gems series.
>
> A standard set of graph tools for trees, graphs, digraphs, et cetera,
> and all the usual operations on them.
>
> A knowledge engineering library with support for the standard knowledge
> capture paradigms and structures.
>
> High technology text and word processing component libraries.
>
> Data presentation libraries.
>
> Data mining and indexing component libraries.
>
> Evolutionary algorithms and neural network component libraries.  (I'd be
> more than happy to port my recent algorithm inventions here to Ada and
> contribute them.)
>
> Data base functionality tightly couple to the Ada language but
> supporting e.g. SQL standard protocols.
>
> A game-writing toolkit.  Arguably, in terms of gaining wider acceptance
> for Ada, this should be the top priority, as it would attract a crowd of
> students and individual freelance programmers, exactly the crowd that
> made C a success outside of its original laboratory environment.
>
> Financial management, planning, and estimating tool kits.  Stock market
> predicting components (might as well throw in snake oil, it keeps the
> snakes well oiled, why not the rest of us?)
>
> Network programming, Web search, and Web presentation technology
> libraries.
>
> Essentially, one could take all of the various ACM and IEEE computer
> oriented proceedings, start at volume 1 number 1 of each, and work
> forward, adding each published algorithm to a library, while
> regularizing data representations and such to make the libraries
> interoperable.
>
> Lots of other people would have longer, more practical lists.
>
> The points that get buried in list making are that there needs to be a
> start, that it needs to be organized, that it needs some hope of
> longevity via a sponsor that is more trustworthy than, for example, the
> US Military's defunct Ada Mandate, it needs a home from which it will be
> accessible, like the WUSTL archives, it needs librarians and indexers
> and master programmers to keep it well organized and easy to search for
> needed tools, it needs a proofing and filtering input stage where the
> community can make contributions and know that they won't just
> disappear.
>
> xanthian, "duck and cover" time.
>
> [Did I mention "free"?  It is pretty pointless to price oneself out of
> the market when trying to foment a revolution, as Sun does by putting
> license fees on commercial use of Java, essentially preventing the
> hobbiest from doing a slow transition to commercial success by putting a
> huge "first step barrier" in front of the first commercial sale of a
> Java product.  Sun got confused about its main goal: preventing
> Microsoft from putting Sun out of business by making the OS unimportant
> again, and got greedy just when a chance of success was looming large.]
>
>
> --
> Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Re: libraries for Ada (was): periodicity

[Ted Dennison]

(misc.misc trimmed)

"Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote in message news:<a77erb$ps7$1@nh.pace.co.uk>...
> Some version of basic data structures. Could we get the GRACE name settled &
> maybe see if a reference implementation can find some level of acceptance?

I'm attempting to open up the "Grace" project on Savannah. I'll let
everyone know when(/if) it is approved.

When it is, I'll post the implementation I have under the GMGPL (the
spec is Public Domain).


-- 
T.E.D.
Home     -  mailto:dennison@telepath.com (Yahoo: Ted_Dennison)
Homepage -  http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

Re: libraries for Ada (was): periodicity

[Marin David Condic]

Sounds like a good start. Hopefully, it will find some acceptance & growth.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:4519e058.0203210645.406dd079@posting.google.com...
> (misc.misc trimmed)
>
> I'm attempting to open up the "Grace" project on Savannah. I'll let
> everyone know when(/if) it is approved.
>
> When it is, I'll post the implementation I have under the GMGPL (the
> spec is Public Domain).
>

Re: periodicity

[Poul-Erik Andreasen]

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
> 
> Nice to see I can come back to comp.lang.ada after an absense of months,
> and find exactly the same subjects still/again being discussed.
> 
> How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.  It is sad to me
> that as long as Ada has been around there still isn't enough substantive
> discussion to have split off a diversity of forums(*) similar to the
> more commercially successful and sought after programming languages.
> This  is, after all, a language much older than Java, 2/3rds as old as
> C, over 40% as old as Fortran by now; why is half the posting volume
> still full of new language angst and defensiveness?

I can follow your point of view, but maybe it is a question about
angle.
resetly there have been an performanse argue about Ada against
Fortran77.
If The quetioner instaed haed made a question like:" how do i
performace optimize this code" he migth have recieved a lot of
RTFM like ansvers. 

There are som very special mecanims in usenet, i. e. If you want
too be sure to get a good response, you can have a friend to make
a deliberatly wrong response, then things will accellerate.  

-- 
-
Poul-Erik Andreasen
Hvis du mangler nogen til noget eller du kan noget for nogen.
http://linux-freelance.pea.dk

Re: periodicity

[sk]

Hi,

>Nice to see I can come back to comp.lang.ada after an absense 
>of months, and find exactly the same subjects still/again 
>being discussed.

I feel your pain :-)


> ... probably with leaf groups of its own.

Don't agree with splitting c.l.a up into sub forums though.

-- 
-------------------------------------
-- Merge vertically for real address
-------------------------------------
s n p @ t . o
 k i e k c c m
-------------------------------------

Re: periodicity

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"sk" <noname@myob.com> wrote:

> Don't agree with splitting c.l.a up into sub forums though.

Well, perhaps the criteria have changed; with around a hundred new
messages since I logged in yesterday, I'd guess a six or ten way split
would be in order.

xanthian.




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Re: periodicity

[Robert Dewar]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message news:<4f13319b766a72c7ae2531d5c399bdca.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>...
> Well, perhaps the criteria have changed; with around a hundred new
> messages since I logged in yesterday, I'd guess a six or ten way split
> would be in order.

I think this would be a bad idea. A hundred new messages
a day is perfectly manageable if you have a decent news
reader that tracks threads. Mostly the subjects of threads
are clear enough, I find I only look at about one third
of all the threads. A thread like "future of Ada" has lots
of posts, but if you are not interested in advocacy posts
(I am not), you just skip the whole thread. THat's near
enough equivalent to having a separate advocacy subgroup.

Re: periodicity

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:

> "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote:

>> Well, perhaps the criteria have changed; with around a hundred new
>> messages since I logged in yesterday, I'd guess a six or ten way split
>> would be in order.

> I think this would be a bad idea. A hundred new messages
> a day is perfectly manageable if you have a decent news
> reader that tracks threads. Mostly the subjects of threads
> are clear enough, I find I only look at about one third
> of all the threads. A thread like "future of Ada" has lots
> of posts, but if you are not interested in advocacy posts
> (I am not), you just skip the whole thread. THat's near
> enough equivalent to having a separate advocacy subgroup.

Ah, yes, the old "I've got great technology, so the devil take the
hindmost" argument.

Of course, if one were trying to evangelize some issue near and dear to
one, say, the wide dissemination of a programming language, to someplace
where the technology isn't the most modern, say, the third world, then a
willingness to believe that the world is not restricted to just what you
see on your desktop might be a wiser  approach.

But then you and I have been around this barn many, many times, Robert.

You aren't learning very fast, and I'm not changing my mind at all, so
you and I discussing your egocentric universe, in public or in private,
is a waste of time for all concerned.

Let's leave this discussion, if any, to others.

xanthian.




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Re: periodicity (splitting comp.lang.ada)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <3cd9b572a0b9f2d8b2459674bacef4b6.48257@mygate.mailgate.org>, "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:
> "Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
> 
>> "Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote:
> 
>>> Well, perhaps the criteria have changed; with around a hundred new
>>> messages since I logged in yesterday, I'd guess a six or ten way split
>>> would be in order.
> 
>> I think this would be a bad idea. A hundred new messages
>> a day is perfectly manageable if you have a decent news
>> reader that tracks threads. Mostly the subjects of threads
>> are clear enough, I find I only look at about one third
>> of all the threads. A thread like "future of Ada" has lots
>> of posts, but if you are not interested in advocacy posts
>> (I am not), you just skip the whole thread. THat's near
>> enough equivalent to having a separate advocacy subgroup.
> 
> Ah, yes, the old "I've got great technology, so the devil take the
> hindmost" argument.
> 
> Of course, if one were trying to evangelize some issue near and dear to
> one, say, the wide dissemination of a programming language, to someplace
> where the technology isn't the most modern, say, the third world, then a
> willingness to believe that the world is not restricted to just what you
> see on your desktop might be a wiser  approach.

While Robert may be guilty of hawking his favorite brand of newsreader
(without naming it) in that post, such is actually not necessary for
his side of the argument.

I use ANUNEWS, which has virtually none of the spiffy features
people praise from other newsreaders.  But threading is basic.
I have no trouble skipping everything that has been delivered to
date on a given topic, or killfiling the topic for the future.
I have much more faith in this old newsreader than in relying
on posters to put their material into the right group, avoid
cross-posting, etc.

Re: periodicity

[David Starner]

On Tue, 19 Mar 2002 20:26:49 +0000 (UTC), Kent Paul Dolan <xanthian@well.com> wrote:
> Ah, yes, the old "I've got great technology, so the devil take the
> hindmost" argument.

Um, yeah. slrn is a half megabyte binary, that can probably be run on a
386 running Minix. It handles this newsgroup just fine. If you can't
find a newsbrowser capable of handling this newsgroup, you need to look
harder.
 
-- 
David Starner - starner@okstate.edu
"It's not a habit; it's cool; I feel alive. 
If you don't have it you're on the other side." 
- K's Choice (probably refering to the Internet)

Universal access to threaded news readers, NOT (was): periodicity

[Kent Paul Dolan]

"David Starner" <dvdeug@x8b4e53cd.dhcp.okstate.edu> wrote in message
news:a78nip$8q61@news.cis.okstate.edu...

> On Tue, 19 Mar 2002 20:26:49 +0000 (UTC), Kent Paul Dolan <xanthian@well.com> wrote:
> > Ah, yes, the old "I've got great technology, so the devil take the
> > hindmost" argument.
> 
> Um, yeah. slrn is a half megabyte binary, that can probably be run on a
> 386 running Minix. It handles this newsgroup just fine. If you can't
> find a newsbrowser capable of handling this newsgroup, you need to look
> harder.


And if you are marginally competent in English, using a computer you
inherited from a defunct international aid foundation, your technology
is, oh, say readnews(), because that's what came in the box, and you are
just getting into computers for the  first time, so the idea of
downloading and upgrading software is completely foreign to you, all
this availability of threaded newsreaders helps you exactly how?

xanthian.

Trust me, the world is _not_ what you see on your desktop.  One of my
former friends refurbishes "closet clutter" computers for the
handicapped (he designs, constructs, and fits prostheses as his day job,
it was a natural hobby/volunteer effort choice for him); again, on a
zero budget, he isn't going to be going out and getting spiffy new
software for his 8086-class computers, and his  beneficiaries are very
likely stuck with what they find in the box.  The Clovis, California
Senior Citizens' Center, behind which I sleep on the sidewalk, is still
running computers with Microsoft Project Manager as their operating
system for their publically accessible computers used by seniors there.

Whenever you assume that a high tech capability exists everywhere, 1)
you are lying to yourself, and 2) you are thereby excluding _someone_
with the choices you make based on an unrealistic model of the universe.

As a separate issue, many places even in the first world, people pay for
their computer access by the kilobyte, and download newsgroups in off
hours, making them extremely volume sensitive.  Splitting a newsgroup is
also of great benefit to these people.  At least half of comp.lang.ada
would go in an advocacy group in most of the other language groups (I
take a bow for having invented the *.advocacy concept with
comp.sys.amiga.advocacy back in the early 1990's) and for these volume
sensitive readers, being able to exclude that one group would cut their
usage charges to read this group in half.


-- 
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Re: Universal access to threaded news readers, NOT (was): periodicity

[Darren New]

Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
> And if you are marginally competent in English, using a computer you
> inherited from a defunct international aid foundation, your technology
> is, oh, say readnews(), because that's what came in the box, and you are
> just getting into computers for the  first time, so the idea of
> downloading and upgrading software is completely foreign to you, all
> this availability of threaded newsreaders helps you exactly how?

About the same amount that a downloadable Ada compiler helps?

-- 
Darren New 
San Diego, CA, USA (PST). Cryptokeys on demand.
      Remember, drive defensively if you drink.

Re: periodicity

[Stephen Leake]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> writes:

> "Robert Dewar" <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
> 
> > I think this would be a bad idea. A hundred new messages
> > a day is perfectly manageable if you have a decent news
> > reader that tracks threads. Mostly the subjects of threads
> > are clear enough, I find I only look at about one third
> > of all the threads. A thread like "future of Ada" has lots
> > of posts, but if you are not interested in advocacy posts
> > (I am not), you just skip the whole thread. THat's near
> > enough equivalent to having a separate advocacy subgroup.
> 
> Ah, yes, the old "I've got great technology, so the devil take the
> hindmost" argument.

In this case "great technology" consists of Gnu Emacs or Netscape
Mozilla, both free downloads that run on any reasonable computer (I
include 5 year old Pentiums running Win95 in my definition of
"reasonable").

> Of course, if one were trying to evangelize some issue near and dear
> to one, say, the wide dissemination of a programming language, to
> someplace where the technology isn't the most modern, say, the third
> world, then a willingness to believe that the world is not
> restricted to just what you see on your desktop might be a wiser
> approach.

If they can't run Netscape, they can't run Ada. So I think that's ok!

> <snip>
> 
> Let's leave this discussion, if any, to others.

Please follow your own advice!

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: periodicity

[Randy Brukardt]

Stephen Leake wrote in message ...
>If they can't run Netscape, they can't run Ada. So I think that's ok!


Ada /= GNAT!

Janus/Ada 83 for MS-DOS is still available (at least until the manuals
run out or we move again...); all it requires is a 640K MS-DOS machine -
even an 8086 will work. That was a fully validated Ada 83 compiler (ACVC
1.11, the last Ada 83 one).

The price is still $129 (see www.rrsoftware.com). We'd charge less if
someone wanted a bunch (we don't have any manufactured ones left, so
there is a cost to making one on demand).

                Randy Brukardt.

Re: periodicity

[Matthew Heaney]

"Kent Paul Dolan" <xanthian@well.com> wrote in message
news:a382a7626f81f2efce1b56bbbb0f35ac.48257@mygate.mailgate.org...
> How about instead of focusing on the future of Ada, and how it compares
> or contrasts with every language on the planet, more useful efforts
> focus on the present of Ada, and making it more full of good libraries
> and freeware tools so that it will _have_ a future.

I realize that this is an old post, but I have indeed written a library that
may be of interest to Ada users.

Charles is a container library, modeled closely on the C++ STL.

You can download the library from my home page:

http://home.earthlink.net/~matthewjheaney/charles-20020918.zip

I make drops about once a week, so you may which to check in periodically to
get the latest version.