Re: Anybody in US using ADA ? New language competition? (long)

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

Warren W. Gay VE3WWG <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca> wrote in message
news:3E15CF31.1020900@cogeco.ca...
>
> In its day, I could see why embedded people had concerns (Ada is still
> a very large "language"). The largeness should not be a concern for
> general purpose use - GNAT just flies through compiles on my 1.2Ghz
> laptop. I can only image how fast it is on current technology.
>
Back when Ada was first emerging, compilers were generating really crappy
code and if a compiler worked at all, it almost certainly wasn't targeted to
your embedded processor. If by some miracle it was, the large overhead could
kill you. Assuming you also had the tools needed to get an executable image
into the target - which would be a rather rash assumption at the time.
Things eventually got better, but not before validating everyone's
prejudices and guaranteeing that Ada would never get considered by a large
segment of the population.

Things have gotten better today but Ada still fails in the embedded world
for a variety of reasons. Sure, you can get good quality compilers that
target some of the larger processors in use today and you might even find
enough support tools to make the job relatively easy, but there are still
lots of tiny processors out there that Ada doesn't (and arguably, can't)
target and in general, Ada is pretty much totally ignored by the embedded
world. (A few notable exceptions out there - including myself.) So if Ada's
original requirements were aimed at satisfying the needs of embedded
development, it seems to have failed in that market. Did it fail because it
failed to satisfy *real* embedded requirements or did it fail for other
reasons? (Political, social, environmental, etc?) Probably a combination of
both.


>
> I think we've discussed this before-- the real reason IMHO is the lack
> of "library support". It is less an issue of the language, but more
> about the libraries and bindings. Being that Ada95 is different than
> C/C++, bindings come into just about everything (for both Windows
> and UNIX) -- speaking non-embedded world wise.
>
> Also a lack of a "generally accepted" container library (standard or
> not), is also a "fracturing component". I myself find the Booch
> components extremely useful, but many I suppose do not like the
> complexities of the instantiations required to use them.
>

If Ada woke up tommorrow with everything in it you describe above, it would
meet the general reaction of "Gee. That's interesting. C/C++ have had this
for years and we're already heavily invested in those technologies. What
else have you got?"

The problem here is not that Ada shouldn't strive to have those things, but
rather that these are just the entry price needed to even get in the game.
Its not enough to be able to supplant someone's heavy investment in other
technology. Whatever Ada does, it needs to become *better* than other
languages out there or nobody has any reason to want to switch. It might
even be necessary to rethink all of the library & binding stuff to do
something totally *different* or Ada is just another "Me Too!!!" player that
is going to be ignored because it will *never* be as good at binding to
something as the language the thing is written in (Unix, Motif, etc.)

> Is it possible that the generics in the _language_ needs to be
> researched to make container libraries more elegant?  Or are the
> implementations of these (Booch?) the problem? Or are we too
> hard on the requirements?
>
I'd say pick one and start enhancing it. We can argue all day long and into
the night about what is the best way to ultimately come up with the
"perfect" container library. Doing that will insure we never have one. Grab
something as a model, get it under a tree that can be easily expanded to
include new things for different problem domains, build a reference
implementation and share it with all the vendors. That would get something
in use and start providing leverage for the developer.


>
> I think you could eventually sell Ada if the binding/library support
> was there. If developers could find all the bindings to the O/S,
> database, GUI and all that other cool Open Sourced set of libraries,
> then it becomes only a matter of language choice. The reality is that
> using Ada for general purpose work is still very much an uphill battle
> on most of these fronts, because the developer must become expert
> in writing bindings to existing libraries and often O/S facilities.
>
Agreed. And disagreed. As noted above, you need the bindings just to be a
player, but I think you've got to offer something *more* than just that to
sway someone away from what they already use. Also, I've never liked Ada
bindings to C libraries because while it is technically possible, itr always
feels like an unnatural act and demands that the Ada developer think like a
C programmer. It would be better if Ada could go down its own path and do
something new/different that got the same net effect as bindings might
produce, but do it in a way consistent with Ada and offering a *better*
answer.



>
> Embedded systems have their own challenge, because they are very much
> focused on efficiency with very limited resources.  On the GP scene
> however, I don't believe this needs to be much of a factor.
>
Really? We're here talking about how great it will be one day when Ada
provides libraries and bindings and all that. Where are they? By the time
Ada succeeds in getting some of the useful things already found in numerous
other languages, the world has passed it by once again. Something needs to
be done with Ada to institutionally/culturally get it to react faster to the
marketplace or it will always be in "catch up" mode chasing the leaders
rather than *being* the leader.

I like Ada and want to see it succeed, but efforts need to be focused on
leapfrogging the competition if this is to happen.

MDC
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Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

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    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
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