Re: Improving the first contact with Ada

["Nasser M. Abbasi" <nma@12000.org>]

On 6/14/2010 1:03 AM, Ludovic Brenta wrote:

> I prefer command-line
> tools over GUI tools, so when I write a utility for my own use, I
> never give it a GUI.
>

May be this is getting off-topic a little...But I think there is a place 
for both?

Many things are really hard to do with just a command line. One needs a 
good GUI for that.

And somethings are easy to do with a command line.

An example: I use rsync command to do my backup. a simple command. A gui 
might actually get in the way here.

But when I want to move a file from one folder to another, rename files, 
etc... I find it easier to use a file manager (a GUI) and the mouse, 
rather than use the command line for this.

When I want to use ftp, I use FileZilla, a GUI frontend to ftp. Much 
easier to use that using ftp commands. I forgot even the ftp commands by 
now.

I think these days, in the web era, langauges with little GUI support 
build into them can cause these language not to become popular.

Ada lack of good GUI integration is a problem. The other night I played 
with GTKada. Wanted to learn how to make GUI with Ada. Downloaded 
examples from libre web site,

http://www.adapower.com/launch.php?URL=http%3A%2F%2Flibre.act-europe.fr%2FGtkAda%2F

read the documents, and build them OK on windows. I found all the 
examples to be trivial, a single button that come up and such.

Other GTKAda small programs that I found on the net (so few out there), 
either do not build OK, or if they do, they crashed when ran.

These days, one needs a good language (like Ada), but also needs good 
support for GUI build-into the language.  The area I am interested in, 
scientific applications, the ability to make plots and write GUI 
front-ends for an application to interface to the algorithm is as 
important as the algorithm itself. Need both.

This is one reason Matlab is popular. The language is not so good 
actually, but it is so easy to make GUI's and do plots with it.

Not trying to compare matlab with Ada here, apples and oranges, but just 
pointing out that the ability to make GUI in a language is important for 
it to become "popular" these days.

my 2-cents.

--Nasser