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=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!newsfeed1.swip.net!137.226.231.214.MISMATCH!newsfeed.fsmpi.rwth-aachen.de!reality.xs3.de!news.jacob-sparre.dk!loke.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ANN: Kickstarter for beginning work on a new open-source Compiler Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:11:32 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <5151491a-14c3-4138-bcb5-f29108aeefb9@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: loke.gir.dk 1395267094 14765 69.95.181.76 (19 Mar 2014 22:11:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 22:11:34 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:18853 Date: 2014-03-19T17:11:32-05:00 List-Id: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" wrote in message news:wajahqy00a66$.1hz593k34vcwt$.dlg@40tude.net... >> The proposal is very ambitious because it provides both a complex IDE >> and a compiler for Ada 2012. > > ... designed in a [obscene, dying, vendor-locked, the list can easily be > continued] language like Delphi. I doubt Ada community will be eager to > contribute in Delphi. I did projects in Turbo, Object Pascal and Delphi, > never again! Beyond that, I'd be very suspious of any supposedly general purpose programming system that couldn't be created in itself. There is a great value to eating your own dogfood (as the saying goes). It gets rid of gross usability problems in a hurry, and it reduces risk in the project (as there cannot be show-stopping bugs in the development tools -- you just have to fix any problems that occur). It does require care to avoid the Catch 22 situation where an old bug is preventing work using the old compiler and a new bug is preventing work using a new compiler so that there isn't any obvious way to do any work. (That happened to us once in the mid-1980s - I had to fix the bug in the old compiler with a binary patch in order to cut the Gordian knot and continue. Have been much more careful about regression testing before abandoning old compiler versions since.) And of course, we all know that Ada is the best language for creating large projects. An Ada development system is surely a large project. There's a reason that virtually all Ada compilers are largely written in Ada. (Some share backends with other systems, but I don't know of any Ada frontends not written in Ada.) Randy.