From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7001494ace46eea7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-09-20 02:58:58 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!130.133.1.3!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!b88f5.pppool.DE!not-for-mail From: Dmitry A.Kazakov Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Overriding discriminants perplexes GNAT 3.14p Date: Sat, 21 Sep 2002 00:06:21 +0200 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de NNTP-Posting-Host: b88f5.pppool.de (213.7.136.245) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 1032515936 5604411 213.7.136.245 (16 [77047]) User-Agent: KNode/0.4 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:29207 Date: 2002-09-21T00:06:21+02:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > Dmitry A.Kazakov writes: > >> Stephen Leake wrote: >> >> > Dmitry A.Kazakov writes: >> > >> >> People rightly criticize MS VC++, but the situation with Ada >> >> compilers isn't much better. >> > >> > Yes it is (in my experience). I've found bugs in _every_ compiler I've >> > ever used. At least with GNAT I have a chance of getting them fixed! >> >> First of all there are bugs and bugs. GNAT is at least ten years old, so >> I would expect that one could not catch it on such primitive things. What >> you are talking about is merely a quality of support, which is a very >> important but yet another thing. Moreover, from what Robert Dewar said >> before his departure, it looks like excellent and thus expensive support >> actually harms quality. ACT intentionally limits the number of GNAT users >> by those with very deep pockets and applications which do not require all >> stregths of Ada. Should GNAT Pro be affordable for small and medium sized >> projects, then Ada would be applied much more wider with so terrifying >> ACT consequence of an increasing support demand. > > You are making a couple of assumptions that I find dubious. > > 1) More and cheaper customers = higher quality > > I don't believe this, because the first consequence of more cheaper > customers is to spread your support personnel thinner, so they have > less time to write quality fixes for the bugs that get reported. Consider personal PC's today and mainframes of 60's. In a long term perspective cheaper products bring higher quality. This could be [and usualy is] undesirable from the point of view of a product vendor. Well, this is how they try to resist to, let's say, progress and then disapper. > 2) ACT customers do not require all strengths of Ada. > > GNAT is the only compiler to support _all_ of the Ada Annexes. ACT > only supports code that customers demand. So they dropped JGNAT. Could this happen if GNAT were widely used in web applications? > So I have to believe that > there is at least one ACT customers using each part of Ada. Which also > helps defeat assumption 1). I hope so. But you should admit that a wider use of GNAT would make it better. > Ok, it is certainly true that compilers perform differently on > different types of code; I suspect your code is in a different domain > than mine. I have an impression that Object Ada better optimizes inlined code, but there are also cases where GNAT is better. >> But what if mismanagement and "new economy" didn't kill DEC? > > Then I'd be running VMS instead of Windows, and Linux would never have > gotten started (hey, I can dream, can't I :). A world free of UNIX! (:-)) -- Regards, Dmitry Kazakov www.dmitry-kazakov.de