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

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

"Mark Bottomley" <mark.bottomley@rogers.com> wrote in message
news:tRPq8.1821$2z1.252@news02.bloor.is.net.cable.rogers.com...
> I would be interested to know if you ever used Rational's Ada development
> environments?
>
I remember when Ada was first out there and Rational came out with their
compiler - that had to run on their own custom hardware. I remember getting
some information about it and hearing Grady Booch talk about it at a trade
show. I never used it. I didn't know anybody who could afford it. :-)


> My experience is that even the earlier environments on their (admittedly
> expensive) custom
> hardware (the R1000's) provided syntax completion, change impact analysis,
> full incremental
> compilation, and fine grained integral revision control that I have yet to
> see equalled. Using
> one of these in a serious development environment where the customer (the
> military) is more
> concerned about tracability and all the nice things in doing rigorous
> development made it a
> pleasure to use.
>
Yeah, I recall the R1000 had some very interesting and inovative features.
IIRC, it didn't store Ada programs as raw text - it went straight from the
editor into a parse tree and was kept that way. There might have been lots
of cool things about it, but there were just so many impracticalities about
it that even though I was in the Defense Industry in the days of cost-plus
contracts, I had no knowledge of or contact with any projects that were
using it. It was just *way* too expensive and/or didn't target whatever
environment was required.


> This cadillac environment was still a fraction of a programmer's annual
> salary, but it was
> typically targetted to embedded systems, not desktops.
>
A *fraction* of a programmer's salary? Unless you were *way* better paid
than I was back in those days, it was more like a *multiple* of a
programmer's salary. I don't remember the exact numbers for the various
options I had looked at back then, but I'm pretty sure that (say, circa late
80's) the base sticker price was somewhere in the six-figure range. It was
definitely beyond the consideration of any garage-startups and quite a bit
more spendy than any DoD contractors I knew wanted to go.

> I still think the greatest thing about Ada is that a compiling program is
> likely to run, where
> a compiling C++ program is just starting out.
>
Definitely a major advantage in my book. Its like having a spelling/grammar
checker for your word processor. It keeps you from making the most egregious
(and stupid/trivial) errors up front. And everyone knows that the earlier
you detect/correct an error in any production chain the less it costs to
fix.

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