Re: Runtime startup code for the GNAT Runtime...and a bit of humble pie.

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

"Simon Clubley" <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote in 
message news:ki9n00$b1$1@dont-email.me...
...
> One of the reasons to use Ada over, say C, is for the increased 
> reliability
> of the code. However, what if the ported Ada RTS actually results in more
> unreliable code because of issues the person porting the RTS did not fully
> understand or was simply was not aware of ?

Ada was really designed to be used as the only thing on the machine. In that 
case, there shouldn't be any real porting effort (presuming the CPU is 
already supported), the only thing that needs to be changed is device 
drivers. The problem of porting RTS comes when you try to use other kernels 
with Ada.

I think it's unfortunate that Ada has moved away from its bare machine 
roots, because that is where the increased reliability really shined (as it 
did on MS-DOS, which was pretty close to a bare machine environment :-). The 
more that the "underlying target system" does, the less advantage that Ada 
has, simply because an Ada program cannot be more reliable than the 
underlying system, and often is less so (there is a interface layer that can 
have bugs, and that layer gets almost no advantage from the use of Ada).

                                          Randy.