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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-30 18:32:07 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: owski@hotmail.com (Adam Ruth) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Date: 30 Apr 2003 18:32:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <9fa75d42.0304230424.10612b1a@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0304240446.493ca906@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.26.118.36 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1051752727 6487 127.0.0.1 (1 May 2003 01:32:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 1 May 2003 01:32:07 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:62957 comp.object:62436 comp.lang.ada:36787 misc.misc:13842 Date: 2003-05-01T01:32:07+00:00 List-Id: > Ok, I am sure a few instances happened. But if you > had to develop device drivers for a living, and if > the language was truly your choice, would you chose Ada as > the language? > > I think the only "yes" answers would be from > people who only know Ada and/or have never > written a device driver. I recently had the [mis]fortune of writing a device driver for NetWare. The only language choices are C and C++. I used C, since C++ support wasn't really up to snuff on NetWare and I'm more comfortable in C. At the time I was writing the driver, I was learning Ada, and by the end of the project I really wish I could have used it. There were entire classes of error I encountered, and had a hard time debugging, that would simply not have existed in Ada. Of course, there were plenty of bugs that would have existed regardless of language, and I'm sure that there are new problems that the use of Ada would introduce. But I'm constantly amazed at the errors that are so easy to avoid in Ada because they simply don't exist. If I had it to do again (I hope I don't!) and Ada was a choice, I'd give it a shot. I'm convinced that the quality of the product would have been superior. Adam