Re: Help finding Ada tools

[bwalker@nosc.mil (Beth Walker)]

Bob Kitzberger wrote:

> >The Ada
> >implementation must support tasking (ActivAda does not have tasking with
> >Win32s).
> 
> --> I hate to sound irreverent - but how does C support tasking under
> --> Win32s?  Perhaps I don't know C well enough and there exists a
> --> portable, tasking C compiler for...
> 
In article <D4IKKB.JBz@thomsoft.com>, bhart@alsys.com (Bill Hart @ignite)
replies:
> --> I guess after seeing this type of mislogic used to justify C for
> --> so many projects (I have been with Alsys since 1987) I never cease
> --> to be amazed at the dual standards applied to Ada vs. any other
> --> language.  


Yes -- I agree that the argument "if the Ada doesn't have tasking, we will
use C" doesn't make sense from a purely language point of view.  That's
because its more of an effort/people issue than it is a language issue.  I
didn't really provide all the pros and cons we are discussing, but to give
you a few:

We are reengineering a program.  It is currently written in C.  There is
little argument that the code will need to be essentially re-written, due
to lots of other reasons (one being that the current program was a
prototype, and the new one is to be the production version).  

The programming staff is split between Ada and C because half of them are
used to C and half are used to Ada.  The C half are the ones that worked on
the original program.  We are on a tight schedule, and they are concerned
about the time required for them to come up to speed with Ada.

Tasking is one thing that Ada has that C doesn't, and the problem being
solved is very task-oriented.  The strong typing is another advantage of
Ada.  However, the C staff feels that they can check out their code using
lint or some other type of pre-processor, etc. so they don't feel that the
strong typing buys them enough to go to the effort of learning Ada.  The
tasking argument did.  

There are lots of other issues which complicate the entire selection
process, which I won't go into.