Re: Language support for flexible handling of system-detected errors.

[Ingo Marks <adv@region-nord.de>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> No need to get insulting. Just consider this point: MSVC++ has
> considerably more features and integration than just about anything I've
> seen that comes out of a box for Ada. While you can get many of the same
> capabilities out of a polyglot of tools that you have to pull together
> from a variety of sources, there isn't something of similar capability for
> Ada. You may not like the way MSVC++ does a variety of things and you may
> have preferences for other toolsets (of which I'm always happy to hear)
> but I don't think that changes the fact that MSVC++ provides navigation,
> GUI building, class libraries, debugging, building, etc., all together in
> one convenient package and I don't see a similar shrink-wrap kit available
> for Ada. If Ada got *at least* as far as MSVC++ it would have achieved
> something pretty cool.

The question is: Do you want to write comfortable software or do you want 
to write software comfortably?

Of course, MSVC++ is a comfortable environment for writing C++ 
applications. But are the applications you write comfortable for your 
customer?

I think it is better to write reliable software with Ada and "simple" tools 
like Xemacs editor and some Ada library than to use a pretty development 
environment which produces results of questionable quality.

I have developed for many years in many programming languages, but Ada is 
the first language which helped me to a) reduce my programming time (about 
half compared to C++) and b) to produce really realiable code. I don't like 
to use a compiler which I don't know to be error free or not. A computer 
science professor told me, that there is _no_ 100% error free C++ compiler 
in the world!

Besides: I use Xemacs with Ada mode. I have tried several Ada editors but 
nothing is more comfortable than Xemacs. Xemacs is a bit hard to learn but 
when you've got it you won't miss it.

> Metrowerks and Code Warrior might make interesting models for deriving a
> set of requirements for an Ada IDE. I'd have to look at them in more
> detail to see what they do that would be A Good Thing. The idea should be
> to identify a set of capabilities & features that folks tend to find
> useful in other IDEs and adapt that to an Ada environment. It never hurts
> to add new capabilities and features along the way so that an Ada IDE
> would have *more* to offer than the other available tools.

IMHO Anjuta is a good starting point for a very pretty Ada IDE. 
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net. SciTE (http://www.scintilla.org/) is 
interesting, too.