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-Thread: 103376,f2aa0ddde84d1b0a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!newsfeed.freenet.de!newsfeed01.chello.at!newsfeed.arcor.de!newsspool3.arcor-online.net!news.arcor.de.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Subject: Re: GNAT verses A# for soft-realtime system Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada User-Agent: 40tude_Dialog/2.0.15.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Reply-To: mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de Organization: cbb software GmbH References: <4uudnaJ7BJK8g4XbnZ2dnUVZ_t-mnZ2d@comcast.com> Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2007 09:58:06 +0200 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Date: 08 Apr 2007 09:57:29 CEST NNTP-Posting-Host: ef9c50b8.newsspool4.arcor-online.net X-Trace: DXC=6RWZNBYMYCI[kmHKHnaEnM4IUKFlA2WbY>8FDNcfSJ;bb[EIRnRBaCd On Sat, 7 Apr 2007 18:38:56 -0400, Chip and Allie Orange wrote: > I have a computer science degree from many years back, but have worked in > system admin and database programming mostly since. > > I now have an opportunity for a hobby project combining two of my interests > that I've always wanted to explore: learning Ada and programming a robot. Greetings! > I can purchase a Windows-based PC robot for $5k, and I'd like to learn to > program it to do autonomous functions (including realtime image analysis). Great, I always wished to do something like that to play with my machine learning project pending. What does it mean "Windows-based PC"? Is it a sort of PC104 module running Windows [CE] or a full-blown PC? How are sensors and actuators connected? Does it have Ethernet controller [I wouldn't even try without one]? Does it have a frame grabber for the camera[s]? Usually the biggest problem is not to choose the compiler. For a hobby there is no choice but [GPL] GNAT. The problem is to get a fully functional Ada run-time for the board you are using, plus the drivers for the sensors and actuators, plus TCP/IP stack for communication with the outer world. For a Windows platform there should be no trouble with this, except that drivers and APIs for sensors and actuators. Often vendor's C libraries are extremely poor in quality. > I have a choice of GNAT or A# for my programming environment. I am sceptical about NET target. Theoretically using Ada should make you independent on whether it be A# or not, but practically I doubt that A# scales, especially for image processing. BTW, Ada is great for image processing. I worked on industrial image processing projects in Ada and it saved us a lot of time, because debugging is quite close to impossible when you are working with images, and you know, Ada is about safety. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de