Re: Ada Tutor Web Site Shutting Down

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Rugxulo" <rugxulo@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:e9ff6294-9947-495e-8301-86065e730d05@v8g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
>
> DJGPP is still barely creaking along, even with GCC 4.5.2 (including
> GNAT), FreeDOS too (2040 coming soon!), but they have very very few
> testers. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but you could always
> run FreeDOS under JPC (Java) in a browser. Someone correct me, but are
> there any better DOS Ada compilers that are still updated??? (Would be
> surprised.)

Better, dunno. Janus/Ada 95 (32-bit only) would be updated if anyone wanted 
it, but no one has asked. (It's still in our pricelists.)

But a better question is why would you want to use a new compiler? Is there 
anything inportant that you can do in DOS that you can't do in a Windows 
console program or a standard Linux program? The main reason for compiling a 
DOS program would be so that you don't have to change anything about, 
including the DOS specific stuff. In that case, you're best off sticking 
with the same compiler that it was built with, why make more work by 
introducing a new set of bugs.

(We occassionally get requests for absolutely ancient compiler versions, for 
someone that needs to make a tiny change in some old program. Not long ago, 
I needed to dig up a 1985 version of Janus/Ada for someone. The cool thing 
was that I tried running it to make sure I'd copied it uncorrupted [an issue 
because it copied from 25 year old floppies], and it worked fine on a modern 
Windows XP machine. I knew there was a reason that we were really careful 
about following the OS rules back in the day...)

                                         Randy.