Re: Ada and Automotive Industry

[ken@nrtt.demon.co.uk (Ken Tindell)]

In article <5683sk$bsc@news.ccit.arizona.edu>
frank@bigdog.engr.arizona.edu (Frank Manning) wrote:

> In article <1996Nov6.210957.3070@ole.cdac.com> James Thiele
> It's a myth that Ada compilers are unrealistic for small
> microcontrollers. There's nothing that prevents anybody from
> implementing an Ada subset that could both (a) be validated and
> (b) fit harmoniously on a small machine.

Now, if you did actually rustle up the money and did form a company
and went ahead and did build a compiler and it did turn out
as efficient as a C compiler for the same target and I could buy it for
less than $5000 then your point would be valid.

The reality of the situation, of course, is that there isn't a big enough
market for such a compiler otherwise Tasking, Keil, Microtec,
Intermetrics, et al would have 8-bit Ada compilers..

> I remember back in October 1995 when we had a big discussion about
> the merits of Ada for small microcontrollers. Here's what Robert
> Eachus and Mike Felman said at the time:
>
> In article <4920s0$kqd@felix.seas.gwu.edu>
> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes:
> 
>>     [...]
>>
>> (1) it is premature to write off the potential for an Ada/8051;
>>
>> (2) some of the complaints about Ada being "too big" for the 8051
>>     may well be made out of ignorance of the possibilities;
>>
>> (3) a GCC target and a port of the GNAT runtime is the way to go.

Like you find gcc targeted at the 8051? gcc ports to 8-bit devices have
been uniformly bad (no fault of the people doing the ports, either).
So take with a pinch of salt any claims that Ada-95-because-GNAT-because-gcc
is great for 8-bit devices.