Re: Improving the first contact with Ada

[jonathan <johnscpg@googlemail.com>]

On Jun 14, 9:35 am, Georg Bauhaus <rm-host.bauh...@maps.futureapps.de>
wrote:

>A teaching project could extend
>across several semesters, can include virtual production
>scenarios, require teams, will start from a larger and serious
>piece of software (to be written by university staff) and
>include a collection of non-accidental hardware.
>This can be fun (model trains is an example, I imagine there are
>others, equally realistic and equally affordable)....


Purely by coincidence (-;) I have been puzzling over the same
problem. We seemed to have reached similar conclusions. In fact
I've been building an off-the-top-of-my-head list of possible
projects - my preference is to provide something for the general
student public rather than (directly) for the classroom. I like
the idea of providing source code and as much friendly instruction
as possible for beginners who want an easy start on an ambitious
project. Here's a candidate I just came across .. I've mentioned
Marte-OS before, but I was unaware of this particular project,
which looks like fun for people interested in kernels and
operating systems, especially real-time Linux:

   Marte-OS as Linux Kernel Module (MLKM) project.
   http://rtportal.upv.es/apps/mlkm/

   This component provides the patches needed to run the
   MaRTE-OS executive as a Linux kernel module. ... MaRTE-OS is
   then executed as a hard real-time executive, and the whole of
   Linux (both the kernel and the applications) is executed as a
   background task.

   With these patches you will be able to run in the same machine
   both Linux and MaRTE-OS.

   The present patches work on Marte-OS 1.2.
   The latest Marte-OS is 1.9.

Don't know if it's too hard, too easy, or impractical .. again
the idea is someone smart gets it running and provides a (very)
friendly road map for future exploration, suitable for kids ..
like me.  Notice a) it plays to Ada's strengths, b) it's
a rapidly growing domain that could not be more important to
industry and c) it's the kind of thing that can
become a lifetime obsession.

It's always bothered me that Ada's nicest
features seem beyond the reach of beginners ... would be nice to
have something out of the box for real-time control. (I know
progress has been made with gnat support for LEGO mindstorms.)
http://libre.adacore.com/libre/tools/mindstorms/

J.