Re: Ada and Automotive Industry

[dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Richard says

"  My challenge still stands. I do not believe the 8051 is an appropriate
  target for Ada.  Creating an Ada compiler from scratch
  for this architecture would be daunting. Porting GNAT?  Well, I
  continue to be skeptical.  If it could be done, there is a huge
  market opportunity.  It is one of the most widely-used microprocessors
  in U.S. industry."


Well I do not think you know enough about GCC or GNAT for your skeptical
viewpoint to be significant. I still have seen no one make a cogent
technical argument that supports this viewpoint. Ken says that it
must be impossible because he saw one half baked poor attempt, you
sayt that you are skeptical without even that much to back up your
skepticism.

As to the huge market opportunity, I do not see it at all. You cannot
guage a particular Ada market by counting the number of processors sold,
you have to look at the total number of lines of code written, and the
likelihood that a significant number of projects would need a significant
number of compilers. I don't see it at all. If some other vendor thinks
they can make money here, fine, but I don't think you should hold your
breath waiting for ACT to do this port. But it is important to realize
that this is based on the estimate that there is an insufficient market,
not on any judgment that a GCC/GNAT port is impossible.

Sure I understand that only the investment of the effort in producing
such a port would settle the question, but any productized GNAT port
is a big (but not daunting) effort -- yes much less effort than is
the case if a completly separate code generator has to be written,
as in many other tchnologies, but still far more than one might consider
investing simply to prove a point :-)