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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3025dd6d917b499c X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.248.34 with SMTP id yj2mr4239885pbc.2.1350597235179; Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:53:55 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: s9ni23080pbb.0!nntp.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.ecp.fr!news.jacob-sparre.dk!munin.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada, the best language with the not-so-best tool chain Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:53:51 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <38af7fb8-b0a4-4a31-87aa-b7b698cc89c3@googlegroups.com> <3ca0ffd0-1764-484b-8fab-17c0d2dd9463@googlegroups.com> <1f645050-cf4c-40bf-a797-9687b69e4a54@googlegroups.com> <18ats2960nsvm$.kfufsnul13aq$.dlg@40tude.net> <5072c9ae$0$6562$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <4keoa6epdxt7.1nnwxy7v7ar90.dlg@40tude.net> <5072dc68$0$6554$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <1f7cmfp1l65w1.1deog8cfxbs0u$.dlg@40tude.net> <5072e37a$0$6556$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net> <1wzhg6cdjkwjj$.uq66rzr2nlgy.dlg@40tude.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1350597234 17896 69.95.181.76 (18 Oct 2012 21:53:54 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 21:53:54 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original Date: 2012-10-18T16:53:51-05:00 List-Id: "Simon Clubley" wrote in message news:k4ve02$g5a$1@dont-email.me... ... > You are still thinking like a professional engineer doing safety > critical work on large systems. :-) > > To understand what people like me are telling you, you need to start > thinking like a hobbyist interested in things like robotics and paying > for their experiments out of their own pockets. I hate to break this to you, but no *professional developer* cares what a "hobbyist" needs for software development. AdaCore has made a lot of useful things available, but all of those were developed for big, paying, professional developers. Those of us in the software business can't develop things only needed by hobbyists (who aren't likely to be able to pay for it) -- what are we going to do to pay for our groceries, our gas, our mortgage, etc.? We can only build things needed by paying customers, and hopefully those will be useful for others as well. There's an old saying: "beggars can't be choosers". That surely applies to "free software". Either pay for it, build it yourself (or convince some other hobbyist to build it for you), or use what's available. In any case, I've never heard of Ada being seriously used on 8-bit processors. Ever! Our old Z-80 compiler (for a subset of Ada 83) was certainly 8-bit, but I don't recall anyone using it as an embedded system. We did have customers for our 16-bit 8086 compilers (usually on 186 boards) to develop bare machine products (mostly in the late 1980's and ealry 1990's). Today, as Dmitry has noted, paying customers are only interested in various RTOSes; no one seems interested in bare machines (for any target). I personally think this is sad; an Ada run-time is all the RTOS that you need for most purposes -- but fighting the market is a losing game. After all, nothing is truely "free"; you *always* pay for it somehow. Either in a lack of functionality, or by loss of privacy (think ads), or by a loss of competion (by forcing competitors out of the market), or by folding it into the price of something else (hardware boards). Randy.