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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,8623fab5750cd6aa X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: 18k11tm001@sneakemail.com (Russ) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada BIND was: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics Date: 12 Jun 2004 23:08:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <40b9c99e$0$268$edfadb0f@dread16.news.tele.dk> <1086715817.122983@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <1086733411.736049@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <3Auxc.11998$XY6.1296622@read2.cgocable.net> <40C85035.4020706@noplace.com> <40CA0032.3010103@noplace.com> <40CAF0E1.4000904@noplace.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 63.194.87.148 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1087106892 3050 127.0.0.1 (13 Jun 2004 06:08:12 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 06:08:12 +0000 (UTC) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1440 Date: 2004-06-12T23:08:11-07:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote in message news:<40CAF0E1.4000904@noplace.com>... > While I'm a believer in Ada, I don't think that coding an app up in Ada > somehow makes it *better* just by that very fact. Nobody buys programs > just because it says "Ada Inside" - so its important to add something > more. Given limited resources, it would seem more productive to come up > with something new and innovative rather than take existing apps and > recode them in Ada just to have an Ada version. You seem to assume that the "recoding in Ada" is a labor-intensive manual process. But what if it could be automated? I'm an aerospace engineer, and I don't know much about automated C-to-Ada conversion, but I think its at least worth consdering. Certainly the resulting Ada code would have *some* of the benefits of Ada. I understand that a crappy design will still be a crappy design even in Ada, but if the original C application works reasonably well, perhaps the automated Ada conversion could be manually tweaked to improve security, reliability, or some other aspect. That certainly seems like a more attractive option than manually rewriting the whole thing. Speaking of crappy designs, I sense some disdain for Linux here because it is written it C. I suggest you all get over that and fast, or you will just make fools of yourselves. I suggested a long time ago here that C is to Ada as a motorcycle is to a car. It's not nearly as safe, but experts can use it effectively. Needless to say, Linux was written by top exerts. That's not to say that it couldn't be done better in Ada, but you can't simply assume that. I think the first step is to try an automated conversion of Linux to Ada, then go from there. I would try it myself, but I wouldn't know how to compile a kernel if it was staring me in the face. As I said, I'm an aerospace engineer.