Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Well, its easier to adopt Ada for a PC/Workstation app than to adopt it for
an embedded platform. At least there is an Ada compiler somewhere targeted
to most of the popular PC/Workstation environments - something that is not
always true of embedded machines.

I've looked briefly at GtkAda and Glade in the past and not having a serious
use for them at the time (and a general lack of time for fooling around! :-)
I kind of let the effort wither on the vine. I've got something going on
that might be able to make use of them now, so I'll probably ressurect the
effort. I've noticed an on-line tutorial or two that might help
coinsiderably. (I couldn't quite figure out how to use Glade to get a GUI
built that didn't look like a P.O.S. A tutorial on driving it around may
help if it shows how to organize the widgets into a nice looking interface.
I just don't have time to tinker with it forever and figure it out.)

Tools like this are moving things in the right direction because it starts
providing the application development leverage that other languages might
already have. It would be nice to see all these pieces wired together into a
single tool - some version of a source code browser/editor as the main
interface that you point at a "project library" and then initiate Glade,
Gdb, etc from that platform as needed & have them all working together. (I
noticed in scanning some of the pages about Gtk that there were a whole set
of Gnome widgets that looked really useful - but they didn't come along for
the ride with GtkAda. It would add even more leverage to have these, or
similar widgets available.)

Anyway, the point is that as Ada finds more ways of getting into the
PC/Workstation development arena, it makes it easier to commit to it for
embedded systems because more and more tools become available as well as
building up an experience base. In general, its a good thing.

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


"Adrian Hoe" <byhoe@greenlime.com> wrote in message
news:3C5B659A.7BAADE49@greenlime.com...
>
> More people are accepting Ada now, at least in my company (new staff).
> Ada will not have the glory of other development tools eg. C++ Builder,
> Delphi, etc. until much bindings are available for programmers'
> disposal. GtkAda and Glade are just the beginning. There is still a long
> way to go for Ada to be accepted in the non-embedded, business
> applications area.
>