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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 115aec,f41f1f25333fa601 X-Google-Attributes: gid115aec,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,a3ca574fc2007430 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Ada and Automotive Industry Date: 1996/11/23 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 198289726 references: <55ea3g$m1j@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <3280DA96.15FB@hso.link.com> <1996Nov6.210957.3070@ole.cdac.com> <5683sk$bsc@news.ccit.arizona.edu> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.realtime Date: 1996-11-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 :-)