* Ada IDE for Win 95
@ 1997-03-15 0:00 John Breen
1997-03-15 0:00 ` Tom Moran
` (4 more replies)
0 siblings, 5 replies; 8+ messages in thread
From: John Breen @ 1997-03-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
<HTML><BODY>
I am a uni student forced to use Ada by my uni. Not my choice, I
can assure you.
<BR>
<BR>What I don't understand is why I should use command-line based tools like
GNAT when there surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 (even if it
is only a front end for GNAT) around.
<BR>
<BR>Does anyone know of such a thing? I would prefer one that is free.
<BR>
<BR>Cheers,
<BR>
<BR>JB
<BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>
^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen @ 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Tom Moran 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen ` (3 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Tom Moran @ 1997-03-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) > surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 ObjectAda (www.aonix.com) has one I've used. (But I *much* prefer my favorite editor and command line .bat files ;) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Tom Moran @ 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar ` (2 subsequent siblings) 4 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-03-15 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <332A3A2B.57B2@mad.scientist.com>, John Breen <wombat@mad.scientist.com> writes: > <HTML><BODY> > I am a uni student forced to use Ada by my uni. Not my choice, I > can assure you. > <BR> I gather you are also forced to use an HTML editor to post to a plain text discussion channel. > <BR>What I don't understand is why I should use command-line based tools like > GNAT when there surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 (even if it > is only a front end for GNAT) around. > <BR> A reasonably independent listing of such tools is available from http://www.adahome.com/ in your native editor environment. > <BR>Does anyone know of such a thing? I would prefer one that is free. Some are free and some cost money. But since we have you here, which are the free IDEs for your chosen non-Ada languages and how would you rate their quality? My own experience with non-Ada IDEs has been with those that cost money, and knowing about the others would be useful. Larry Kilgallen (remaining HTML-droppings omitted) ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-03-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 0 siblings, 1 reply; 8+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-03-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) Larry said <<Some are free and some cost money. But since we have you here, which are the free IDEs for your chosen non-Ada languages and how would you rate their quality? My own experience with non-Ada IDEs has been with those that cost money, and knowing about the others would be useful.>> One problem is that the term IDE is used rather casually. To me it should refer to something like the Apex environment, where you have a relatively closed system that contains a complete set of tools aimed at effective configuration and control and devlopment of large scale systems. An IDE might or might not have a visual interface of some kind (these are really two quite orthogonal issues -- integrated development environment, and visual interfaces). A lot of people use the phrase IDE to refer to any system, no matter how simple and incomplete, that allows some kind of simple point and click interface for compiling, linking etc. TO me, this is a confusing use of the term, but increasingly that is what it comes to mean. For example, something like the Brighton "IDE" for Windows-95 is a handy little visual interface which may well be of use for beginning students (at which it is aimed), but is not intended, or usable, for serious large scale development (e.g. it does not begin to be a full development environment, and at least in the version I saw, has nothing at all to say about configuration management, which seems to me to be at the heart of any real IDE. On the other hand, one can certainly have an integrated development environmnent that is not point-and-click oriented (indeed I can say for my self that the *only* IDE that would possibly be of interest to me is one which did NOT rely on such an interface, since I consider them useless to me for serious development wor). Now of course there are people who really like visual interfaces and find them effective, and so visual IDE's certainly make a lot of sense for this kind of person. For me, I am always doing six things at once, and I find it clearer to avoid any one of these things fragmenting itself into windows ... for example, I find pmgdb, the PM version of GDB under OS/2 to be very impressive, and you can use it to give very nice demoes of windows popping up with useful stuff, clicking on variables etc, but I personally prefer to use gdb in normal command line mode. As usual, different tools suit different folks. One of the advantages of an open environment like GNAT is that you can tailor the tools you use, and the way you use them, to match your own requirements. Some people in the GNAT group are real EMACS fans, and in particular like the GDB integration that it provides, and the Ada mode stuff, but it's not to my taste -- which is fine, I choose different sets of tools (and indeed no two people in Ada Core Technologies work with exactly the same set of tools, or even on the same machine -- almost everyone is using different machines, everyone uses what they feel most comfortable and productive with). I do worry that we mis train students if we *only* present them with vey simple ways of preparing programs that do not scale up. I think it is fine to have simple systems when you are starting out (and for example, Mike Feldman's simple GNAT interface for DOS seems very nice for starting students), but I don't think this is all they should be introduced to! ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-03-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 0 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-03-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) In article <dewar.858533314@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: > A lot of people use the phrase IDE to refer to any system, no matter how > simple and incomplete, that allows some kind of simple point and click > interface for compiling, linking etc. IDE is certainly a term which is marketing-hype-ready. On the other hand, if I want what _I_ think is an IDE, I am not at all worried about the possibility that an appropriate tool might be out there and _not_ using that term. If my initial search is based on the marketing terms, all I have to do is narrow the field down (yes, possibly to nothing). > Now of course there are people who really like visual interfaces and > find them effective, and so visual IDE's certainly make a lot of sense > for this kind of person. There are also people who have to _write_ visual interfaces, and a good IDE will integrate the visual editing part with the code editing part so that one can readily switch back and forth between the two domains where one must do things to make it so button #3 will henceforth be triangular and insensitive when the day of the month is a prime number. Certainly implementing the Ada Reference Manual is not a very visual-oriented programming problem. Since there are three major and many minor GUI metaphors out there, and each one is the "only" appropriate one for certain operating systems, I would prefer to get IDEs which do the GUI stuff so that I do not have to deal with the nitty-gritty in each case but can still make a program look "natural" in the OS environment. > As usual, different tools suit different folks. One of the advantages of > an open environment like GNAT is that you can tailor the tools you use, > and the way you use them, to match your own requirements. On the other hand, my preference is to find something which already has an appropriate set of stuff implemented so that I don't have to spend a lot of time fussing with it. > I do worry that we mis train students if we *only* present them with vey > simple ways of preparing programs that do not scale up. I would certainly agree that students whose only experience is with an IDE environment would be quite poorly equipped, because that biases their capabilities and preferences toward environments and at present may bias their language choices away from Ada as well. Larry Kilgallen ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Tom Moran 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen @ 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-03-17 0:00 ` John English 1997-03-18 0:00 ` Darren C Davenport 4 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Robert Dewar @ 1997-03-16 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) <<<BR>What I don't understand is why I should use command-line based tools like GNAT when there surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 (even if it is only a front end for GNAT) around.>> You should try using Ada mode EMACS ... If you are looking for a Borland style thing (I would not grace simple systems like this with the gradiose title of IDE), then there are a couple around, one from Brighton, you can track down these and other tools from www.ada.home.com. Personally I find Borland style interfaces compltely useless for serious development, but tastes differ. They may be OK for trival student type work, but for serious development, they get in the way. ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen ` (2 preceding siblings ...) 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar @ 1997-03-17 0:00 ` John English 1997-03-18 0:00 ` Darren C Davenport 4 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: John English @ 1997-03-17 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) John Breen (wombat@mad.scientist.com) wrote: : I am a uni student forced to use Ada by my uni. Not my choice, I : can assure you. : What I don't understand is why I should use command-line based tools like : GNAT when there surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 (even if it : is only a front end for GNAT) around. : : Does anyone know of such a thing? I would prefer one that is free. Try ftp://ftp.brighton.ac.uk/pub/je/gnide06.zip -- and yes, it's free (GNU GPL). --------------------------------------------------------------- John English | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk Senior Lecturer | http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/je Dept. of Computing | fax: (+44) 1273 642405 University of Brighton | --------------------------------------------------------------- ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
* Re: Ada IDE for Win 95 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen ` (3 preceding siblings ...) 1997-03-17 0:00 ` John English @ 1997-03-18 0:00 ` Darren C Davenport 4 siblings, 0 replies; 8+ messages in thread From: Darren C Davenport @ 1997-03-18 0:00 UTC (permalink / raw) John Breen (wombat@mad.scientist.com) wrote: : <HTML><BODY> : I am a uni student forced to use Ada by my uni. Not my choice, I : can assure you. : <BR> : <BR>What I don't understand is why I should use command-line based tools like : GNAT when there surely must be a windows 95 IDE for Ada 95 (even if it : is only a front end for GNAT) around. : <BR> : <BR>Does anyone know of such a thing? I would prefer one that is free. : <BR> : <BR>Cheers, : <BR> : <BR>JB : <BR> : </BODY> : </HTML> Jeez, try to be a little more open minded. Anyway, Aonix and RR software both make compilers with IDEs and they are discounted for students to less than $200 or so, probably less than you spend on beer in a semester. Darren ^ permalink raw reply [flat|nested] 8+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~1997-03-18 0:00 UTC | newest] Thread overview: 8+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed) -- links below jump to the message on this page -- 1997-03-15 0:00 Ada IDE for Win 95 John Breen 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Tom Moran 1997-03-15 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-03-17 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen 1997-03-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar 1997-03-17 0:00 ` John English 1997-03-18 0:00 ` Darren C Davenport
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