What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Lucretia]

Hi,

I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
their next implementation language?

Thanks,
Luke.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Hoàng Đình Long]

On Mar 9, 5:23 am, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
> their next implementation language?
>
> Thanks,
> Luke.

I asked a similar question some days ago.
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/6e3f191debc78584

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Ludovic Brenta]

Hoàng Đình Long writes on comp.lang.ada:
> On Mar 9, 5:23 am, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
>> their next implementation language?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Luke.
>
> I asked a similar question some days ago.
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ada/browse_thread/thread/6e3f191debc78584

Unfortunately, it seems to me most PHBs base their decisions on hype, so
Ada "just" needs more hype.

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 8 Mar, 23:23, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
> their next implementation language?

Three things:

1. Knowledge. Most companies do not even know that Ada exists
(really!). Somebody has to tell them, but if nobody internally has
this knowledge and people do not look for knowledge on their own, then
who is going to tell them?

2. Availability of resource. This is not about people on the job
market that are waiting to be employed, but about people that are
already working for the company - are they willing to learn Ada? (but
before that, see 1. above)

3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
are either bug-ridden or outdated.

The 1. and 2. above are internal and can be solved by the company. The
3. above is external and in my opinion is the most important problem
to be solved.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-08 23:23, Lucretia wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
> their next implementation language?
>
> Thanks,
> Luke.


Well, it tooks 10 years of PHP to make me understand the importance of
using "the right" language. Yes, I'm a bit dense.

I'm currently in the process of getting rid of all that PHP (500kloc)
in my business and replacing it with Ada. It's a rather long haul.

Also I've started development of an Android application, where the
server is done in Ada.

So in my smallish business (17 employees) Ada has already been chosen as
the implementation language of choice. Sadly I'm not in the software
business, so the fact that http://responsum.dk will be all Ada powered
in a few years is probably not going to turn all that many heads.  :o)

I think what is keeping Ada from success outside its "normal" domain is
lack of knowledge. There's simply not enough buzz generated in the Ada
community, which in turn leads to fewer young whippersnappers actually
picking it up as their language of choice.

And for managers/PHB's to pick it up, there needs to be a steady and
reliable flow of programmers proficient in Ada.

And lets face it: The future does belong to the young, so we need to
garner their interest if we want Ada to flourish.

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[localhost]

Somebody else already pointed out the difficulty of finding qualified
people. Most companies already pay for toolchains so you need a "good"
argument like how much money will you save today, tomorrow is too far away
in todays economic climate. Why should we pay big money for Ada when we can
already get Java for basically nothing and C++ for cheap and we can find
Java and C++ coders for a pittance and they're worth every penny ;) but Ada
people are expensive.

Like most things in business its about money and not quality. Ada is going
to remain a niche language because only where quality is important (planes
not crashing) or other projects where they get to use other peoples money
(government contracts) nobody can really afford Ada no matter how good it
is. And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 3/9/2011 2:39 AM, localhost@example.org wrote:

>  And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.

Could please expand on the above?

Isn't Ada now part of gcc, which is free, like like g++ and
all the other free development tools from gnu.

If you want to buy a commercial C++ compiler, then
are you saying that commercial Ada compilers are more
expensive than the C++ ones?

For me, a 'toolchain' means just a compiler, make, nice
editor, and nice debugger would help also help. A GUI
builder will also be good if I want to do GUI applications.

--Nasser

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Ludovic Brenta]

localhost@example.org wrote:
> Somebody else already pointed out the difficulty of finding qualified
> people. Most companies already pay for toolchains so you need a "good"
> argument like how much money will you save today, tomorrow is too far away
> in todays economic climate. Why should we pay big money for Ada when we can
> already get Java for basically nothing and C++ for cheap and we can find
> Java and C++ coders for a pittance and they're worth every penny ;) but Ada
> people are expensive.

I don't think Ada programmers are any more expensive than Java or C++
programmers.  The language does not make a difference in salary; only
their level of experience does.  It is true that Ada programmers tend
to be experienced; either because they learned Ada long ago at
university, or because they are young, bright, self-motivated people
who learned on their own.  They do tend to be the better programmers,
too, IMHO, since they know more than one language.

> Like most things in business its about money and not quality. Ada is going
> to remain a niche language because only where quality is important (planes
> not crashing) or other projects where they get to use other peoples money
> (government contracts) nobody can really afford Ada no matter how good it
> is. And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.

What you say is true in most cases, simply because most people are too
stupid to have a long-term, or even medium-term, vision.  In fact,
most of them have no vision at all; as far as technical decisions are
concerned, they simply follow the herd like lemmings.  But in the
medium term, the lack of quality in software (i.e. bugs, delays,
budget overruns) can cost much more than the savings you can achieve
with Ada.  In this perspective, Ada is a competitive advantage against
lemmings.

Note that you can get a good Ada toolchain at no cost[1].  It is
always possible to get paid or volunteer support for this version of
GNAT, case by case.  I think this is a viable proposition for small
businesses.  The wide availablility of this zero-cost compiler,
combined with GNU/Linux and the Internet, has sparked the recent
renaissance of Ada in the hobbyist space.  It is now starting to
percolate into the SOHO space (witness Thomas Løcke).

[1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Installing

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[localhost]

>>  And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.
>
> Could please expand on the above?

Have you priced an Ada toolchain?

> Isn't Ada now part of gcc, which is free, like like g++ and
> all the other free development tools from gnu.

Yes for home developers but commercial outfits don't always like free stuff
as they need support and fingers to point when something breaks or when the
developers don't read manuals ;)
>
> If you want to buy a commercial C++ compiler, then
> are you saying that commercial Ada compilers are more
> expensive than the C++ ones?

Yes, much. Compare an Ada toolchain with Visual C++ or Intel C++ products.

>
> For me, a 'toolchain' means just a compiler, make, nice
> editor, and nice debugger would help also help. A GUI
> builder will also be good if I want to do GUI applications.

Right.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[localhost]

> I don't think Ada programmers are any more expensive than Java or C++
> programmers.

I admit I haven't looked into it that much but when I did on a UK site the
salary survey showed Ada coders making much more (2x or more) than Java or
C++ staff. I'm not in charge of hiring or such so it doesn't matter what I
think anyway.

> their level of experience does.  It is true that Ada programmers tend
> to be experienced; either because they learned Ada long ago at
> university, or because they are young, bright, self-motivated people

Yeah but the guys who learned Ada long ago are old now and companies want
young guys out of uni. The uni guys work harder and are cheaper. Like I said
they're worth every penny. Nobody wants to pay for quality or experience.

> What you say is true in most cases, simply because most people are too
> stupid to have a long-term, or even medium-term, vision.  In fact,
> most of them have no vision at all; as far as technical decisions are
> concerned, they simply follow the herd like lemmings.  But in the
> medium term, the lack of quality in software (i.e. bugs, delays,
> budget overruns) can cost much more than the savings you can achieve
> with Ada.  In this perspective, Ada is a competitive advantage against
> lemmings.

I agree with you but I'm a programmer, not an accountant. Our opinions don't
count ;)

> [1] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Installing

Great link!

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 09.03.11 12:38, localhost@example.org wrote:

>> If you want to buy a commercial C++ compiler, then
>> are you saying that commercial Ada compilers are more
>> expensive than the C++ ones?
> 
> Yes, much. Compare an Ada toolchain with Visual C++ or Intel C++ products.

Last time I heard that one must prepare for a few $$$$
to be payed for a supported edition of Visual C++.  Supported
as in the Ada sense of "support".

Don't know about the Ada language currently in full Atego/Aonix
ObjectAda, but it looks quite inclusive WRT tools.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 09.03.11 09:58, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> On 8 Mar, 23:23, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
>> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
>> their next implementation language?

> 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> are either bug-ridden or outdated.

What do you think about Ada 2005 support in SofCheck's compiler?
Or about that in IBM Rational Ada?

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[localhost]

> Or about that in IBM Rational Ada?

Is Rational still selling and did they really support 2005? I checked a few
years ago just on the Ada 95 and it was 35k dollars per seat.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 09.03.11 15:21, localhost@example.org wrote:
>> Or about that in IBM Rational Ada?
> 
> Is Rational still selling and did they really support 2005? I checked a few
> years ago just on the Ada 95 and it was 35k dollars per seat.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/ada/

Judging by what IBM employees have been doing (e.g.
leading the Ada 2005 standardization effort) and
saying (e.g. about working on Ada.Containers, IIRC),
it seems fair to assume that Rational Ada has not been
entirely frozen at Ada 95.

Pascal Leroy has been mentioning large, long term customers.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[localhost]

> http://www-01.ibm.com/software/awdtools/developer/ada/
>
> Judging by what IBM employees have been doing (e.g.
> leading the Ada 2005 standardization effort) and
> saying (e.g. about working on Ada.Containers, IIRC),
> it seems fair to assume that Rational Ada has not been
> entirely frozen at Ada 95.
>
> Pascal Leroy has been mentioning large, long term customers.

I haven't had a look at the link yet but thats good news. I hope IBM will
make a workstation available for home users that doesn't cost 35 thousand
dollars because that's just too high.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Wright]

Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> writes:

> 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> are either bug-ridden or outdated.

Speaking only of GCC, is this actually any different for Ada vs C or
C++? (and the outdated ones have their own bugs ...)

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 9 Mar, 21:43, Simon Wright <si...@pushface.org> wrote:

> > 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> > Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> > are either bug-ridden or outdated.
>
> Speaking only of GCC, is this actually any different for Ada vs C or
> C++? (and the outdated ones have their own bugs ...)

Well, my experience with the C and C++ support in the GCC family is
very positive. In fact, I have never (like in "not even once")
encountered a situation where the g++ would surprise me or crash in
front of my eyes. It has its own issues that relate more to the target
language (like the ability to create inconsistent binary from
mismanaged source files) or to its evolution strategy (like breaking
ABI almost every release), but really, it has never surprised me with
bugs coming from its own implementation.
This is much different with GNAT, which is unfortunately so bug-ridden
as to really slow down the development work. The difference is even
more frustrating if we compare the kind of code that I used in these
languages - that is, very advanced or even outright experimental code
in C++ vs. tutorial-level examples in Ada.
I have submitted several bug reports for GNAT on my own and if you
search the archives of this group you will find my (almost) regular
rants about that.

For the practical example - I have just announced the availability of
YAMI4 v. 1.3.0, which involved quite a bit of Ada development. I have
decided to use three different versions of GNAT to ensure that the
code compiles properly for the widest audience. The result - it was
not possible. The compilers either crashed or produced code with
runtime errors. This forced me to introduce *very* ugly workarounds,
which, ironically, resulted in additional compiler warnings on another
version. That is, I had to agree to have compiler warnings on version
X only to compile the code at all on version Y.

If you need some numbers to back these observations, just download the
YAMI4 source package and do this:

$ find . -name '*.ad[bs]' | xargs grep workaround

there are 57 entries.

I estimate that this additional effort was somewhere between 33% and
50% of the whole work.

The YAMI4 project contains also code in C++, Java, Python and (most
recently) C#, so it might be a good platform for comparisons. From
these, only Python proved to be problematic on 64-bit platforms due to
internal interpreter bugs. C++, Java and C# did not exhibit *any*
problems related to compilers or runtime libraries.

I write all this because I try to be frank and honest - even though it
does not look very well for Ada. These are important factors to take
into account when choosing the technology for the next project
(whether commercial or not), because obviously the additional effort
is not negligible.

Having said this I must add that I really hope that things will
improve in the future and this is why I was willing to make this
investment. However, do not expect every company out there to do the
same, as obviously the decision dynamics are usually different.

What are the alternatives for small companies that want to use Ada?
I don't know, really. I have approached Aonix (now Atego), but they
have apparently frozen 15 years ago and stopped responding when I
mentioned that I need Ada 2005 features. Rational is out of question
if its price range is as described in another post. SofCheck might be
a viable solution - but then the price difference (reminder: g++ costs
0$) is another factor to take into account.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Lucretia]

On Mar 9, 10:04 pm, Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homep...@gmail.com> wrote:

> $ find . -name '*.ad[bs]' | xargs grep workaround
>
> there are 57 entries.
>
> I estimate that this additional effort was somewhere between 33% and
> 50% of the whole work.

> mentioned that I need Ada 2005 features. Rational is out of question

This sounds like interfaces which have been problematic since they
first introduced them. Don't know what 4.6 is like though.

Luke.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 8, 2:23 pm, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
> their next implementation language?

One big problem, IMO, is that it seems to be almost impossible for
engineers to actually play with Ada (including its all-important
tasking and realtime features) on simple embedded hardware.  If you
could send them home with an under-$200 embedded board (like, say,
this one for $12: http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/250863.jsp)
and some free plug-and-play tools (limited would be fine), then they
could actually get a feel for the benefits of Ada on their own.  Some,
at least (the clear-thinking ones?) would then become interested in
championing Ada in the workplace.  But if the engineers can't get
their hands on it in a low-cost exploratory fashion, why would they
champion it?

I am astonished that AdaCore, for example, doesn't offer plug-and-play
toolsets for a half-dozen assorted low-end boards, some with graphical
LCDs, some with ethernet, some with various analog and digital IOs,
just to prime the pump for their products.  They should do that and
sponsor some contests to help bring future supporters and customers
onto the bandwagon.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 10 Mar, 01:38, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> This sounds like interfaces which have been problematic since they
> first introduced them.

Yes. Interfaces as an isolated language feature are not that much
interesting. As far as I'm concerned, they start to be useful only
when combined with other features and these two combinations are the
most important for me:

type My_Controlled is
   new Ada.Finalization.Limited_Controlled and My_Interface with ...

protected type My_Protected is new My_Interface with ...


Both bring GNAT to its knees.

(btw - the fact that protected and controlled cannot be combined in a
single type declaration is a language defect, but that's another
story)

> Don't know what 4.6 is like though.

Really looking forward to it. As I have already said, I have decided
to make this investment because I believe that things will improve in
the future. Hopefully that future will come this year - then the
answer to the original question will have different accents.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-09 23:04, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> This is much different with GNAT, which is unfortunately so bug-ridden
> as to really slow down the development work. The difference is even
> more frustrating if we compare the kind of code that I used in these
> languages - that is, very advanced or even outright experimental code
> in C++ vs. tutorial-level examples in Ada.



This is most disheartening.

Maybe we would all have been better off, if Ada 2012 had instead been
named Ada 2021 and the next 10 years spent on making current Ada
compilers actually support Ada 95 and Ada 2005 features without error.

Why add a bunch of new features, if the old ones still aren't fully
operational?



> What are the alternatives for small companies that want to use Ada?
> I don't know, really. I have approached Aonix (now Atego), but they
> have apparently frozen 15 years ago and stopped responding when I
> mentioned that I need Ada 2005 features. Rational is out of question
> if its price range is as described in another post. SofCheck might be
> a viable solution - but then the price difference (reminder: g++ costs
> 0$) is another factor to take into account.



My Ada skills are currently not at a level where I've experienced any of
these problems, but since I do plan on bringing Ada into my business and
I am slowly learning more and more about Ada, chances are that I too
will run into the sort of issues you've described here, sooner or later.

Ada might be an awesome language, but what does that help if the
compilers aren't working as advertized?

I'm honestly feeling a bit depressed after reading your post Maciej, and
to make matters worse, it just started raining and I have to spend the
entire day hacking PHP. On the other hand I'm also energized by the fact
that there are skilled people like you in the Ada community - people
that push the envelope.

:o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

On 3/10/2011 12:06 AM, Thomas L�cke wrote:

> Why add a bunch of new features, if the old ones still aren't fully
> operational?
>

I think it is by 'law' that an ISO standard language needs to be
updated every 5 or so years?

Something to keep the language lawyers busy all the time :)

As an effect of this, one can see that computer languages start
simple, and in couple of decades they all become so complicated
and complex to use. Then a new simple language comes along,
and the cycle starts again.

This happens to all languages, look at the new FORTRAN. If you
think Ada is complex and has lots of features, you need to
look at new Fortran.

Also, Look at Java now, it started as a simple language in 1995,
now I find it the language very complicated with all the additions
made to it.

I miss turbo pascal now ;)

--Nasser

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Ludovic Brenta]

Thomas Løcke writes on comp.lang.ada:
> Ada might be an awesome language, but what does that help if the
> compilers aren't working as advertized?
>
> I'm honestly feeling a bit depressed after reading your post Maciej,
> and to make matters worse, it just started raining and I have to spend
> the entire day hacking PHP. On the other hand I'm also energized by
> the fact that there are skilled people like you in the Ada community -
> people that push the envelope.

Things are not as bleak as Maciej makes them seem; by his own admission,
most of the bugs he encountered were with interfaces.  The system I work
on consists of 1.5 million lines of Ada and has been in existence for
almost 20 years.  I would not say we spend 50% of our time reporting and
working around compiler bugs; the real figure is probably 1% for us,
below noise level.  That's probably because we don't use interfaces :)

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Gerd]

On 9 Mrz., 12:24, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:
> On 3/9/2011 2:39 AM, localh...@example.org wrote:
>
> >  And the Ada toolchains are not cheap.
>
> Could please expand on the above?
>
> Isn't Ada now part of gcc, which is free, like like g++ and
> all the other free development tools from gnu.
>
> If you want to buy a commercial C++ compiler, then
> are you saying that commercial Ada compilers are more
> expensive than the C++ ones?
>
> For me, a 'toolchain' means just a compiler, make, nice
> editor, and nice debugger would help also help. A GUI
> builder will also be good if I want to do GUI applications.
>
> --Nasser


I work at an enginnering company. We work for different customers, our
software team are 5 person.

1. If one uses GNAT GPL, he has to make his work GPLed. Our customers
wouldn't accept this.

2. Pricing for GNAT PRO would be to much for such a small development
team (I think they offer support for at leat 10 person teams). Our
customer will not pay more, only for the software to be written in
Ada.

3. Software development is not only done on Windows and Linux.

4. Ada is not available for many of the processors that are used in
embedded range (e.g. NEC 850, Infineon TriCore, or - still used - 8051/
HC11), and if there would be an Ada compiler (in fact a complete tool
chain is needed, including RT support for the bare board), then the
costs are far beyond of what would be acceptable (see Green Hills fo
example).

5. For a lot of projects not only a tool chain is needed, but a
"safety certified" tool chain is required.

6. If one project can be done in Ada, and ten others could not (due to
lack of tool support), then it is not economic to have two different
tool chains.

7. There is no experience how Ada would fit into the Autosar
architecture, that is used in automotive range.

8. Ada tools are not adopted to systems often used in embedded range
like Windows CE or OSEK.

Regards, Gerd

PS: Developers with Ada know-how are not a problem here.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-10 09:26, Nasser M. Abbasi wrote:
> On 3/10/2011 12:06 AM, Thomas L�cke wrote:
>
>> Why add a bunch of new features, if the old ones still aren't fully
>> operational?
>>
>
> I think it is by 'law' that an ISO standard language needs to be
> updated every 5 or so years?
>
> Something to keep the language lawyers busy all the time :)


I surely hope that "keeping it updated" does not equal "forced to add
new features".

:o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-10 09:27, Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> Things are not as bleak as Maciej makes them seem; by his own admission,
> most of the bugs he encountered were with interfaces.  The system I work
> on consists of 1.5 million lines of Ada and has been in existence for
> almost 20 years.  I would not say we spend 50% of our time reporting and
> working around compiler bugs; the real figure is probably 1% for us,
> below noise level.  That's probably because we don't use interfaces :)


It is good to hear Ludovic, but a system that has been in existence for
20+ years are not likely to be using _a lot_ of Ada 2005 features, yes?

And if that is the case, then Maciej's point still stand: There are
currently no Ada compilers that fully support Ada 2005.

And even so we already have Ada 2012 in the pipeline, introducing even
more features. Who knows when we'll have a fully Ada 2005 compliant
compiler!  :D

I still plan on sticking with Ada. It fits my needs and I've already
come to rely on its uncanny ability to help me transform my ideas into
actual working code. Also AWS is simply too awesome to pass up for a
web-monkey like me.

:o)

-- 
Thomas Løcke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 10/03/2011 09:26, Nasser M. Abbasi a �crit :
> On 3/10/2011 12:06 AM, Thomas L�cke wrote:
> 
>> Why add a bunch of new features, if the old ones still aren't fully
>> operational?
>>
> 
> I think it is by 'law' that an ISO standard language needs to be
> updated every 5 or so years?
> 
> Something to keep the language lawyers busy all the time :)
It's the opposite: once a language is standardized, it does not change
for 5 years. After that period, the committee has to decide on
reconducting the standard as-is for another five year period, or
starting a revision.

> As an effect of this, one can see that computer languages start
> simple, and in couple of decades they all become so complicated
> and complex to use. Then a new simple language comes along,
> and the cycle starts again.
> 
> This happens to all languages, look at the new FORTRAN. If you
> think Ada is complex and has lots of features, you need to
> look at new Fortran.
> 
> Also, Look at Java now, it started as a simple language in 1995,
> now I find it the language very complicated with all the additions
> made to it.
> 
> I miss turbo pascal now ;)
Your very true observation applies to Turbo-Pascal too... Look at Delphi
now!
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Adalog a d�m�nag� / Adalog has moved:
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:35:23 +0100, Thomas L�cke wrote:

> It is good to hear Ludovic, but a system that has been in existence for
> 20+ years are not likely to be using _a lot_ of Ada 2005 features, yes?

Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.

We at cbb software GmbH have commercial projects based on 2005. The major
new features from the developer's perspective are:

1. MI (unfortunately only as interfaces)

2. Boxed generic parameters <> (in Ada 95 it was all or nothing)

3. Anonymous access types of parameters and constraints of access types
(not null, constant). Yes, we know that anonymous access types are bad, but
there is nothing to replace them right now. Ada 2012 will likely change
this.

Less usable features:

1. The return statement. You could live without it.

2. Relaxed rules on where a tagged type can be derived from. It can be
handy sometimes.

Unusable features:

1. Limited results, though we have two or three places with it, just enough
to regret about it.

2. Limited aggregates, as above.

> And if that is the case, then Maciej's point still stand: There are
> currently no Ada compilers that fully support Ada 2005.

GNAT Pro is such a compiler, at least we are using it as such.

> I still plan on sticking with Ada. It fits my needs and I've already
> come to rely on its uncanny ability to help me transform my ideas into
> actual working code. Also AWS is simply too awesome to pass up for a
> web-monkey like me.

Well, privately I keep my old Ada 95 projects in Ada 95. New projects which
anyway are dependent on GNAT, e.g. ones using GtkAda, are Ada 2005.

All running projects at work are all Ada 2005 and we will definitely switch
to Ada 2012 as soon as possible.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:21:45 -0800 (PST), Gerd wrote:

> 4. Ada is not available for many of the processors that are used in
> embedded range (e.g. NEC 850, Infineon TriCore,

I think that TriCore might become supported. There is a gcc back-end and
VxWorks for TriCore. I think that a paying customer might convince AdaCore
to port the RTL there. It does not look as a big deal.

> 5. For a lot of projects not only a tool chain is needed, but a
> "safety certified" tool chain is required.

Hmm, this is where GNAT shines. VxWorks is certified too, AFAIK.

> 7. There is no experience how Ada would fit into the Autosar
> architecture, that is used in automotive range.

We investigated this issue on a customer request. There is nothing that can
make Ada not fitting into Autosar at the RTE level. Function level is a
different issue, I doubt that any "reasonable" programming language will be
used there anyway. The only problem why we didn't start it, is that there
was no customer ready to pay for it.
 
> 8. Ada tools are not adopted to systems often used in embedded range
> like Windows CE or OSEK.

That is true, but if there were demand AdaCore would start supporting them.
The actual problem is that Ada is invisible for automotive customers and
conversely, AdaCore seem to ignore this market.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 10.03.11 11:21, Gerd wrote:

> 4. Ada is not available for many of the processors that are used in
> embedded range (e.g. NEC 850, Infineon TriCore, or - still used - 8051/
> HC11), and if there would be an Ada compiler (in fact a complete tool
> chain is needed, including RT support for the bare board), then the
> costs are far beyond of what would be acceptable (see Green Hills fo
> example).

Is this true even if you go the SofCheck -> C(++) route
(which reportedly is being used actively with "safety certified"
being a requirement)?

Is it different for any language more advanced than assembly
language or C?

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 10.03.11 12:12, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:35:23 +0100, Thomas L�cke wrote:
> 
>> It is good to hear Ludovic, but a system that has been in existence for
>> 20+ years are not likely to be using _a lot_ of Ada 2005 features, yes?
> 
> Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.

> Less usable features:
> 
> 1. The return statement. You could live without it.

I find return ... do handy when initializing task objects, or
objects "owned" by a task, since the task becomes active only
after the statements of the extended return have executed.

(Got this pattern from one of the important subordinate clauses
of which Barnes's book has plenty :-)

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-10 12:12, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.


That makes it even more odd/annoying that 6 years down the line, someone
like Maciej still can't use plain Ada 2005 features without running into
compiler issues/errors.

Or have I perhaps missed Maciej's original point?


> GNAT Pro is such a compiler, at least we are using it as such.


Yea, I wish I could afford it, but AFAIK AdaCore doesn't really cater to
the SOHO crowd, which is sad for someone like me.  :o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:27:49 +0100, Thomas L�cke wrote:

> On 2011-03-10 12:12, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.
> 
> That makes it even more odd/annoying that 6 years down the line, someone
> like Maciej still can't use plain Ada 2005 features without running into
> compiler issues/errors.

It was 15(?) years before C++ templates became usable without issues, are
they now? Compare investments into C++ compilers with ones into Ada.

My take is that Ada 2005 introduced features, which brought less to the
programmer, but required more on the compiler designer. AdaCore does not
have necessary resources to fix everything quickly.

> Or have I perhaps missed Maciej's original point?

His point was that he has no issues with C++ compilers. That makes me
wonder what kind of projects he does, because we have huge issues with the
compilers we are using (VC++, Borland C++, gcc). It is just so that nobody
would expect a C++ program compilable by two compilers. It takes a huge
amount of work to do, even if the program uses no external template or
class libraries. Comparing to this, porting from ObjectAda to GNAT was
almost trivial, even with Win32 bindings used.

>> GNAT Pro is such a compiler, at least we are using it as such.
> 
> Yea, I wish I could afford it, but AFAIK AdaCore doesn't really cater to
> the SOHO crowd, which is sad for someone like me.  :o)

Yes, this is IMO an error on the AdaCore's side. They underestimate the
leverage of low-end marked. They aren't the first. There were IBM, DEC, Sun
before them. But that is their decision...

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 10.03.11 13:58, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

>> Yea, I wish I could afford it, but AFAIK AdaCore doesn't really cater to
>> the SOHO crowd, which is sad for someone like me.  :o)

IIRC, they suggested that another support business could form
around GMGPL GNAT or FSF GNAT.

> Yes, this is IMO an error on the AdaCore's side. They underestimate the
> leverage of low-end marked. They aren't the first. There were IBM, DEC, Sun
> before them. But that is their decision...

Comeaucomputing manages to produce a fine C++ compiler
that uses another platform (C) compiler to produce
executables.  Maybe there's an idea.

Duncan Sands had once started to combine GNAT and LLVM.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 10 Mar, 09:27, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:

> Things are not as bleak as Maciej makes them seem; by his own admission,
> most of the bugs he encountered were with interfaces.

This is true. I have eagerly used interfaces in my project, because
they properly represent my design habits in the particular domain I'm
interested it. I like limited unconstrained types, too and extended
return construct completes this picture.

> the real figure is probably 1% for us,
> below noise level.  That's probably because we don't use interfaces :)

This is perfectly OK and represents the continuity of your long-term
project, which started long time ago. I would never expect to see the
same code structure in your project as in mine, as they have been
started in completely different circumstances.
I'm also fully aware that experience with the given toolchain
contributes a lot to the final result. I can imagine that for every
new development I will do, the effort related to compiler bugs will be
a lot smaller - I will simply know what to avoid and I will be able to
foresee workarounds before I will actually need them. This is obvious
and that's why I don't despair and treat it as a (unavoidable?) step
in the whole process of adopting the new technology.

But we are talking about companies selecting Ada for new projects, not
about benefiting from old experiences.

Imagine a company that selects Ada for a pilot project or for
evaluation and that hits the same kind of problems. Fighting with the
compiler is not something that such a company should experience at the
very beginning. If "Ada is too difficult for us", then what? Stick to
Java?

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 10 Mar, 13:58, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
wrote:

> It was 15(?) years before C++ templates became usable without issues, are
> they now? Compare investments into C++ compilers with ones into Ada.

But this has nothing to do with the original question.
We are not 15 years ago and we don't care about somebody else's past
investments (even if it sounds bad).

We have 2011 today and a range of compilers to choose from. Some of
them work, some of them don't. And there are new companies that start
new projects. They don't care at all about the history of each
particular toolchain - and frankly, they don't have to. This is the
landscape.

> > Or have I perhaps missed Maciej's original point?
>
> His point was that he has no issues with C++ compilers. That makes me
> wonder what kind of projects he does,

http://www.inspirel.com/products.html

The SOCI and C++/Tcl libraries involve a good dose of metaprogramming,
operator overloading and basically every single funny language
feature. These projects were written for fun, so there was no limit
for what to use. :-)
The codebase contains only few workarounds for VC++ and none for g++,
as far as I remember.
In my experience the only problem that I had to face when porting from
g++ to VC++ was related to the contents of standard header files -
they tend to include each other in strange ways and differently on
each platform. But certainly, after some brushing it is perfectly
possible to compile even very complex code on both compilers.

> because we have huge issues with the
> compilers we are using (VC++, Borland C++, gcc).

BC++ is crap. If you have to target it, you can expect problems and I
can understand that the combination with the other two is problematic.

But then - maybe it is again the matter of experience and ability to
foresee problems before they come. I have been using C++ for
multiplatform development for the last 10 years, so my perspective
might be similar to the perspective of experienced Ada programmer who
does not have problems with GNAT. :-)

But then again, we are talking about new companies starting new
projects.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> Or about that in IBM Rational Ada?

Just for fun I did a Google search for Rational Ada. I found an IBM site 
about it that showed a couple of different products. Following the link for 
the "Basic" product I checked the feature list. Nowhere did I see any 
mention of the Ada version supported. Does this compiler support Ada 2005? I 
clicked on the link that said "Learn More" to download a PDF about the 
product but I got a 404 error.

I'm sorry but it seems to me that I should be able to determine the answer 
to the basic question, "Does this compiler support Ada 2005?" without 
calling them or requesting a quote.

Peter

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-10 15:20, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> Just for fun I did a Google search for Rational Ada. I found an IBM site
> about it that showed a couple of different products. Following the link
> for the "Basic" product I checked the feature list. Nowhere did I see
> any mention of the Ada version supported. Does this compiler support Ada
> 2005? I clicked on the link that said "Learn More" to download a PDF
> about the product but I got a 404 error.
>
> I'm sorry but it seems to me that I should be able to determine the
> answer to the basic question, "Does this compiler support Ada 2005?"
> without calling them or requesting a quote.



I did the same thing, only to discover that their website is a disaster
of dead links and missing information.

:o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 05:49:30 -0800 (PST), Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> On 10 Mar, 13:58, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
> 
>> It was 15(?) years before C++ templates became usable without issues, are
>> they now? Compare investments into C++ compilers with ones into Ada.
> 
> But this has nothing to do with the original question.
> We are not 15 years ago and we don't care about somebody else's past
> investments (even if it sounds bad).

In 15 years it will be 15 years ago. It is a process. Though I personally
don't buy it. I see no reason why a language cannot be fixed once and for
all, except for certain things, which are unknown how to do. The difference
between 80's (when Ada and C++ were originated) and now is huge. Unless
really new computing paradigms arise (quantum, molecular computing), it is
perfectly clear how a good language must look like.

> We have 2011 today and a range of compilers to choose from. Some of
> them work, some of them don't. And there are new companies that start
> new projects. They don't care at all about the history of each
> particular toolchain - and frankly, they don't have to. This is the
> landscape.

Actually they do care. Granted, their knowledge is almost always mythical
and anecdotic. Normally the language and tools are chosen arbitrarily and
then the choice is justified with pseudo-technical and economical reasons.
History is one of them. Since the choice is random, more visible crap
enjoys higher chances to be chosen. This is how negative selection works.

>> because we have huge issues with the
>> compilers we are using (VC++, Borland C++, gcc).
> 
> BC++ is crap. If you have to target it, you can expect problems and I
> can understand that the combination with the other two is problematic.

How a company which produced the first people's C++ compiler managed to
achieve this pitiful state 20 years later?

Comparing resources, it seems that an Ada compiler is much easier to
manage.

BTW, people in c.l.a. are frequently discussing proposals of killer
applications to be developed by the community, e.g. internet browser,
almost as frequently as the spelling "ADA". That is rubbish. The first
thing the community must do, if it were capable to do anything at all, is a
publicly maintained living Ada compiler independent on GNAT.

> But then - maybe it is again the matter of experience and ability to
> foresee problems before they come.

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra

> But then again, we are talking about new companies starting new
> projects.

They won't hear me or you.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-10 15:31, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> But then again, we are talking about new companies starting new
>> projects.
>
> They won't hear me or you.


I'm hearing you both, and have done so since I started looking at Ada a
couple of years ago.

And believe you me, I'm trying my darndest to learn.

I run a business. I want to make sure the decisions I make are as sound
as possible.

So some of us do hear "you".

:o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:45:17 +0100, Thomas L�cke wrote:

> I'm hearing you both, and have done so since I started looking at Ada a
> couple of years ago.

Thanks. 

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 10.03.11 15:31, Thomas L�cke wrote:

> I did the same thing, only to discover that their website is a disaster
> of dead links and missing information.

This is true of their Rational offerings too, not specific
to Ada.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 10.03.11 15:20, Peter C. Chapin wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2011, Georg Bauhaus wrote:
> 
>> Or about that in IBM Rational Ada?
> 
> Just for fun I did a Google search for Rational Ada.

On the hrefed page, bottom link says, under "Highlights",
"Rational Ada Developer family data sheet (PDF, 1.14MB)"

which directs browser software to
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/rad14078usen/RAD14078USEN.PDF

Possibly outdated, although the calendar date stated is January 2010.

Still, as you have mentioned, the only up to date information
will be available through usual business channels.  (None that I'm
likely to ever use, but typical IBM customers know their way.)

It is known that IBM/Rational staff have been involved in
how to implement Ada 2005.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dirk Craeynest]

In article <87r5afv0qa.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org>,
Ludovic Brenta  <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
>The system I work on consists of 1.5 million lines of Ada and has
>been in existence for almost 20 years.

FWIW, it's closer to 2 million lines of Ada now, Ludovic.
(1_951_694 to be precise.)

And although development indeed started roughly 20 years ago, the
system has been in constant evolution since it became operational
16 years ago.

Dirk

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dirk Craeynest]

In article <4d78f730$0$6987$9b4e6d93@newsspool4.arcor-online.net>,
Georg Bauhaus  <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> wrote:
>It is known that IBM/Rational staff have been involved in
>how to implement Ada 2005.

At the Ada-Europe 2009 conference the IBM vendor presentation mentioned
an "early availability" release of Apex for Ada 2005.

At that time, June 2009, the IBM web site posted a page which included
the following announcement (it's no longer online, I checked):

-------
"Ada 2005 support in Rational Apex"

UPDATE - 11 May 2009

An "Early Availability" release (for Apex native) with a complete
implementation of Ada 2005 is available to customers who request it.
If you are interested in such a release, IBM is interested in your
feedback as well as which features of Ada 2005 are most important to
you. A "Generally Available" release has not yet been planned. If you
would like to receive the "Early Availability" release or would like
further information, please contact IBM Rational Client Support.

IBM Rational will offer Ada 2005 for each of the variants under Apex
4.4.0, that is, Solaris Native, Linux Native, PowerPC Rexec, PowerPC
VxWorks, and PowerPC LynxOS. However, the "early availability"
release is intended to be for either of the host platforms, with a
later release for the embedded targets.
-------

Currently, as in "now", the IBM web site includes a page at
<http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21441989>,
which is dated 2010-07-23, announcing:
"Apex 4.4.6 (Apex with Ada05) is available for download".

See also the "Product news" box on the Rational Apex page at
<http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/Overview/Software/Rational/Rational_Apex>.

Please note I have no affiliation with IBM: the above is provided
just for information.  HTH

Dirk
Dirk.Craeynest@cs.kuleuven.be (for Ada-Belgium/-Europe/SIGAda/WG9 mail)

*** 16th Intl.Conf.on Reliable Software Technologies - Ada-Europe'2011
*** June 20-24, 2011 **** Edinburgh, UK **** http://www.ada-europe.org

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Randy Brukardt]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1094 bytes --]

"Thomas L�cke" <tl@ada-dk.org> wrote in message 
news:4d78c3c6$0$23757$14726298@news.sunsite.dk...
> On 2011-03-10 12:12, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>> Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.
>
> That makes it even more odd/annoying that 6 years down the line, someone
> like Maciej still can't use plain Ada 2005 features without running into
> compiler issues/errors.

Interfaces are a particularly difficult feature to get even close to right. 
I'd expect to be finding bugs in those essentially forever (just as happens 
with finalization). Indeed, these are hard enough to implement that there 
are no plans to implement them in Janus/Ada in the forseeable future (modulo 
a customer with $$$, of course). There are a lot of other things that 
Janus/Ada needs that will take an order of magnitude less development time 
(and thus are much better choices for development effort).

This is a problem with MI in general, not just with Ada. Bugs are still 
turning up in C++ compilers, and they have more than a decade's head start 
on GNAT...

                                     Randy.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Gautier write-only]

On 8 mar, 23:23, Lucretia <Lucretia9...@yahoo.co.uk>:

> I'm just wondering what it would take for a company to choose Ada as
> their next implementation language?

You need to convince people what would be the advantage of switching
to Ada.
One mean (perhaps the only one, in absence of any hype or buzz effect)
is to invest some time making a program in Ada that is working a lot
better (faster, more reliable, user-friendly) than an existing one,
and show it around. And that not for the fun of doing it in Ada, but
because in the end it can deliver results to the company and it has a
better software to use/sell.
______________________________________________________________
Gautier's Ada programming -- http://gautiersblog.blogspot.com/
NB: follow the above link for a working e-mail address

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Manfred Kremer]

Wonder what happened to the Ada Compiler Validation Suite.
Was this abandoned or is it still maintained to reflect recent changes to 
the ARM?
For several years I had the impression that the Validation Suite is 
something that distinuishes Ada from other programming languages and could 
be a reason to use validated Ada compilers.

    Manfred

"Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:ilber1$hcc$1@munin.nbi.dk...
> "Thomas L�cke" <tl@ada-dk.org> wrote in message 
> news:4d78c3c6$0$23757$14726298@news.sunsite.dk...
>> On 2011-03-10 12:12, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>>> Ada 2005 was not that big step forward.
>>
>> That makes it even more odd/annoying that 6 years down the line, someone
>> like Maciej still can't use plain Ada 2005 features without running into
>> compiler issues/errors.
>
> Interfaces are a particularly difficult feature to get even close to 
> right. I'd expect to be finding bugs in those essentially forever (just as 
> happens with finalization). Indeed, these are hard enough to implement 
> that there are no plans to implement them in Janus/Ada in the forseeable 
> future (modulo a customer with $$$, of course). There are a lot of other 
> things that Janus/Ada needs that will take an order of magnitude less 
> development time (and thus are much better choices for development 
> effort).
>
> This is a problem with MI in general, not just with Ada. Bugs are still 
> turning up in C++ compilers, and they have more than a decade's head start 
> on GNAT...
>
>                                     Randy.
>
> 

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Stephen Leake]

Gerd <GerdM.O@t-online.de> writes:

> 2. Pricing for GNAT PRO would be to much for such a small development
> team (I think they offer support for at leat 10 person teams). Our
> customer will not pay more, only for the software to be written in
> Ada.

I don't understand this argument. Using Ada instead of C, I get easily a
factor of 2 (I usually say 10, but let's be conservative) productivity.

So you can use 2 people instead of 4, freeing up 2 for another project.

People cost at least $100k per year, so you have that to spend on an
Ada toolchain.

GNATPRO is around $25k per year.

What is the problem? I'm guessing you don't really believe the
productivity factor.

There is a learning curve with any new toolchain, but you imply that's
not an issue.

> 3. Software development is not only done on Windows and Linux.

Just out of curiosity, what development OS are you using? Or are you
refering to the target OS?

> 4. Ada is not available for many of the processors that are used in
> embedded range (e.g. NEC 850, Infineon TriCore, or - still used - 8051/
> HC11), and if there would be an Ada compiler (in fact a complete tool
> chain is needed, including RT support for the bare board), then the
> costs are far beyond of what would be acceptable (see Green Hills fo
> example).

This is a real problem, although the SoftCheck method of compiling to C
and then using the C toolchain for a final step is an option. You will
probably have to use a subset of the Ada runtime, but that's still far
better than C.

> 5. For a lot of projects not only a tool chain is needed, but a
> "safety certified" tool chain is required.

You seem to be implying that you can get a safety certified C toolchain
for less than you would need to pay for GNATPRO. I simply don't believe
that! But maybe there is an economy of scale at work; if someone can
sell 100k copies of a certified C toolchain, it will be cheaper than
GNATPRO. 

> 7. There is no experience how Ada would fit into the Autosar
> architecture, that is used in automotive range.

Yes, this is a learning curve, which requires up front investment. It
will pay off (factor of 2 productivity).

> 8. Ada tools are not adopted to systems often used in embedded range
> like Windows CE or OSEK.

Same as point 4.

> PS: Developers with Ada know-how are not a problem here.

That's good news!

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Hoàng Đình Long]

On Mar 10, 3:26 pm, "Nasser M. Abbasi" <n...@12000.org> wrote:

>
> As an effect of this, one can see that computer languages start
> simple, and in couple of decades they all become so complicated
> and complex to use. Then a new simple language comes along,
> and the cycle starts again.
>
> Also, Look at Java now, it started as a simple language in 1995,
> now I find it the language very complicated with all the additions
> made to it.
>

Well, I agree with you on the complexity Java has become. But I think
Lisp is an exception of "the cycle" you were talking about :D

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Manfred Kremer wrote:

> Wonder what happened to the Ada Compiler Validation Suite.
> Was this abandoned or is it still maintained to reflect recent changes to the 
> ARM?

Didn't it become ACATS?

     http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html

If so, it has been updated to follow the latest standard.

Peter

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Stephen Leake wrote:

> This is a real problem, although the SoftCheck method of compiling to C 
> and then using the C toolchain for a final step is an option. You will 
> probably have to use a subset of the Ada runtime, but that's still far 
> better than C.

SofCheck provides a complete run time mostly in Ada with some C. Certain 
aspects of it need to be ported to your target platform but in principle, 
assuming your target is capable, you could compile full Ada onto your target 
after doing the necessary porting (and compiling the run time system as 
well, of course).

Peter

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Rego]

> One big problem, IMO, is that it seems to be almost impossible for
> engineers to actually play with Ada (including its all-important
> tasking and realtime features) on simple embedded hardware.  If you
> could send them home with an under-$200 embedded board (like, say,
> this one for $12: http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/250863.jsp)
> and some free plug-and-play tools (limited would be fine), then they
> could actually get a feel for the benefits of Ada on their own.  Some,
> at least (the clear-thinking ones?) would then become interested in
> championing Ada in the workplace.  But if the engineers can't get
> their hands on it in a low-cost exploratory fashion, why would they
> champion it?

Disagree. Almost all RT commercial boards come with full documentation for clients, in which you can develop you own drivers for it in any language. Just for curiosity (and sure motivated by the "almost impossible for engineers") I looked into the site you sent and there is these docs and several examples in C which you can bind with Ada or write your pure Ada plugins or even start from zero from specs (which are very detailed in the site's pdfs). Furthermore, it is exactly what it's done when we need to integrate a new equipment to main computer or other device, or when we need to develop new BSPs. In several cases you can contact the manufacturer for providing more detailed board specs. 
This is not a simple task in any language, but surely is not an Ada issue.
I'd recommend to use Ada (rather than C, C++, Assembler, ...) for developing this kind of app due to it makes me feel RTOS features very intuitive and consistent.
Regards.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:37:16 -0500, Stephen Leake wrote:

> I don't understand this argument. Using Ada instead of C, I get easily a
> factor of 2 (I usually say 10, but let's be conservative) productivity.
> 
> So you can use 2 people instead of 4, freeing up 2 for another project.
> 
> People cost at least $100k per year, so you have that to spend on an
> Ada toolchain.
> 
> GNATPRO is around $25k per year.
> 
> What is the problem? I'm guessing you don't really believe the
> productivity factor.

The problem is that this is not how people make their decisions. You repeat
the biggest DEC's mistake, which ultimately ruined them. People don't buy
cost-efficient solutions. You do *cheap* ones. You must be cheaper or same
price, then other factors may come into considerations. In that order.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 11, 6:01 am, Rego <pvrego.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > One big problem, IMO, is that it seems to be almost impossible for
> > engineers to actually play with Ada (including its all-important
> > tasking and realtime features) on simple embedded hardware.  If you
> > could send them home with an under-$200 embedded board (like, say,
> > this one for $12:http://www.st.com/internet/evalboard/product/250863.jsp)
> > and some free plug-and-play tools (limited would be fine), then they
> > could actually get a feel for the benefits of Ada on their own.  Some,
> > at least (the clear-thinking ones?) would then become interested in
> > championing Ada in the workplace.  But if the engineers can't get
> > their hands on it in a low-cost exploratory fashion, why would they
> > champion it?
>
> Disagree. Almost all RT commercial boards come with full documentation for clients, in which you can develop you own drivers for it in any language. Just for curiosity (and sure motivated by the "almost impossible for engineers") I looked into the site you sent and there is these docs and several examples in C which you can bind with Ada or write your pure Ada plugins or even start from zero from specs (which are very detailed in the site's pdfs). Furthermore, it is exactly what it's done when we need to integrate a new equipment to main computer or other device, or when we need to develop new BSPs. In several cases you can contact the manufacturer for providing more detailed board specs.
> This is not a simple task in any language, but surely is not an Ada issue.

Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
(including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
included tasking library) because I have done it.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Hyman Rosen]

On 3/11/2011 3:37 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
> People cost at least $100k per year, so you have that
 > to spend on an Ada toolchain.
>
> GNATPRO is around $25k per year.
>
> What is the problem? I'm guessing you don't really believe the
> productivity factor.

Of course not. Who would? The very notion of "Buy our tool for
$25K per year and you'll save twice as much." immediately triggers
suspicion of a snow job by salesmen. You are asking a company to
commit quite a bit of money on a tool that will need to be thrown
away if things don't work out (which is not true of extra employees,
who can be reassigned). Furthermore, it's a technology that's
perceived as being long past its prime and never successful even in
its heyday.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Rego]

Develop BSPs is not a so easy task, but it's far from impossible, even for newcomers. Such toolsets are very usefull, you can be focused in coding higher-level layers, but coding the basic layers is enjoying too, and provides a good study for this type of application. One just have to make it once for seeing that it's not for just for the old guys.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 11.03.11 16:20, KK6GM wrote:

> Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> included tasking library) because I have done it.

GNAT for Lego Mindstorm?

The ad video, including demo, is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9CzwGGduBs

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 11, 8:42 am, Rego <pvrego.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Develop BSPs is not a so easy task, but it's far from impossible, even for newcomers. Such toolsets are very usefull, you can be focused in coding higher-level layers, but coding the basic layers is enjoying too, and provides a good study for this type of application. One just have to make it once for seeing that it's not for just for the old guys.

If you're going to try and attract newcomers (but otherwised
experienced engineers) to embedded Ada, it needs to be as simple as
installing the prebuilt binaries on a Windows or Linux machine.
That's why I'm suggesting (wishing for, more like) that GNAT or some
other Ada vendor choose a few commonly-available boards and package up
an out-of-the-box Ada installation for them.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-11 19:15, KK6GM wrote:
> That's why I'm suggesting (wishing for, more like) that GNAT or some
> other Ada vendor choose a few commonly-available boards and package up
> an out-of-the-box Ada installation for them.


That would be truly awesome.  :o)

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Randy Brukardt]

"Peter C. Chapin" <PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote in message 
news:alpine.WNT.2.00.1103110703470.1228@WHIRLWIND...
> On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Manfred Kremer wrote:
>
>> Wonder what happened to the Ada Compiler Validation Suite.
>> Was this abandoned or is it still maintained to reflect recent changes to 
>> the ARM?
>
> Didn't it become ACATS?
>
>     http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html
>
> If so, it has been updated to follow the latest standard.

Right, but keep in mind that the purpose of the ACATS is to ensure 
commonality between Ada implementations, not to find bugs per-se. Of course, 
it does have the effect of finding bugs as well.

In particular, the ACATS does not have a lot of tests that combine various 
features together. That's simply because the emphasis is on ensuring that 
every feature is there and works as expected -- bugs are much more likely to 
surface when features are combined (as in the OPs question).

So while the ACATS raises the quality of Ada compilers, it is not going to 
come close to eliminating bugs in those compilers.

                                           Randy.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dan]

On Mar 11, 2:40 pm, "Randy Brukardt" <ra...@rrsoftware.com> wrote:
> "Peter C. Chapin" <PCha...@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote in messagenews:alpine.WNT.2.00.1103110703470.1228@WHIRLWIND...
>
> > On Fri, 11 Mar 2011, Manfred Kremer wrote:
>
> >> Wonder what happened to the Ada Compiler Validation Suite.
> >> Was this abandoned or is it still maintained to reflect recent changes to
> >> the ARM?
>
> > Didn't it become ACATS?
>
> >    http://www.ada-auth.org/acats.html
>
> > If so, it has been updated to follow the latest standard.
>
> Right, but keep in mind that the purpose of the ACATS is to ensure
> commonality between Ada implementations, not to find bugs per-se. Of course,
> it does have the effect of finding bugs as well.
>
> In particular, the ACATS does not have a lot of tests that combine various
> features together. That's simply because the emphasis is on ensuring that
> every feature is there and works as expected -- bugs are much more likely to
> surface when features are combined (as in the OPs question).
>
> So while the ACATS raises the quality of Ada compilers, it is not going to
> come close to eliminating bugs in those compilers.
>
>                                            Randy.

When the ACVC was originally developed, the intent was that it *would*
come close to eliminating bugs in compilers.  It was certainly
recognized that a finite number of tests developed without knowledge
of actual compiler behavior couldn't detect all bugs.  But it was
intended that the ACVC would be continually enhanced, so when actual
compiler bugs did surface, the ACVC test objectives and corresponding
tests would be reexamined and strengthened if necessary.   Validation
certificates expired annually, so such compiler bugs would be
eliminated in the next round of testing.

This is explained in John Goodenough's 1981 paper at:
   http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/C-M.1981.220496
on page 59:

"The IG will be a living document. As implementers ask
questions about the standard, as implementation subtleties
are discovered, and as errors in compilers turn up,
the IG will be updated by those responsible for maintaining
the ACVC. We expect the IG to minimize unwitting
deviations from the Ada standard, despite the plethora
of Ada implementations likely to emerge in the coming
years. At the very least, Ada implementations should be
closer to standard than those of other widely implemented
"standard" languages."

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Stephen Leake]

KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com> writes:

> Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> included tasking library) because I have done it.

Just to be clear on what you are saying:

1) at the time you did this, you were a newcomer to both C and C++

2) The Rowley Crossworks toolset did not come with support for the board
   you used. 

3) You spent only a few hours writing a board support package for the
   toolset+board combination.

4) The toolset includes a tasking library, which you got working.

If all of that is true, then yes, you can do the same with Ada.

Most people could not. Someone experienced with a particular toolset, and
faced with a new board, could do this, but should expect to take longer,
in any language.

The Ada runtime requires more work than the typical C runtime, because
of tasking, exceptions, fixed point types, and other issues.

-- 
-- Stephe

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Saturday, March 12, 2011 4:47:53 AM UTC-8, Stephen Leake wrote:
> KK6GM <mjs...@scriptoriumdesigns.com> writes:
> 
> > Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> > its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> > (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> > by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> > toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> > possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> > included tasking library) because I have done it.
> 
> Just to be clear on what you are saying:
> 
> 1) at the time you did this, you were a newcomer to both C and C++

No, but I did not need any advanced language skills.  The engineers I'm imagining will have embedded experience in C and/or C++, and they will be interested in seeing how Ada compares.  They will typically, I imagine, have tried Ada on a PC first.
 
> 2) The Rowley Crossworks toolset did not come with support for the board
>    you used. 

It did come with board support.  It targets a number of available boards, so I just had to install the correct BSP with a few clicks.
> 
> 3) You spent only a few hours writing a board support package for the
>    toolset+board combination.

See above.
> 
> 4) The toolset includes a tasking library, which you got working.

In a very short time, working from supplied examples.
> 
> If all of that is true, then yes, you can do the same with Ada.
> 
> Most people could not. Someone experienced with a particular toolset, and
> faced with a new board, could do this, but should expect to take longer,
> in any language.
> 
> The Ada runtime requires more work than the typical C runtime, because
> of tasking, exceptions, fixed point types, and other issues.

And that's why pretty much nobody who wants to evaluate embedded Ada on their own (as opposed to getting paid to do so) will make the effort.  It's up to an Ada tool vendor, perhaps in cooperation with a board vendor, to provide an out-of-the-box solution.

John McCormick's setup at the University of Northern Iowa is an interesting example.  An Ada toolset is already configured for the hardware, and the students can walk in and start programming to that Ada/hardware combination without first having to customize the Ada runtime to the hardware.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Florian Weimer]

* Simon Wright:

> Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
>> Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
>> are either bug-ridden or outdated.
>
> Speaking only of GCC, is this actually any different for Ada vs C or
> C++? (and the outdated ones have their own bugs ...)

The C and C++ front ends have a more diverse set of contributors,
including some who are not directly in the compiler business, which
makes certain situations much less likely to occur.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Florian Weimer]

* Hyman Rosen:

> On 3/11/2011 3:37 AM, Stephen Leake wrote:
>> People cost at least $100k per year, so you have that
>> to spend on an Ada toolchain.
>>
>> GNATPRO is around $25k per year.
>>
>> What is the problem? I'm guessing you don't really believe the
>> productivity factor.
>
> Of course not. Who would? The very notion of "Buy our tool for
> $25K per year and you'll save twice as much." immediately triggers
> suspicion of a snow job by salesmen. You are asking a company to
> commit quite a bit of money on a tool that will need to be thrown
> away if things don't work out (which is not true of extra employees,
> who can be reassigned). Furthermore, it's a technology that's
> perceived as being long past its prime and never successful even in
> its heyday.

And you need to consider not just the developer output relative to C,
but also all the other languages out there and their promised
productivity gains.  In only very few cases, it's an either-or between
C and Ada.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Lucretia]

Maybe you should advertise this fact on your website if you don't already.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:04:14 +0100, Maciej Sobczak  
<see.my.homepage@gmail.com> a écrit:
> This is much different with GNAT, which is unfortunately so bug-ridden
> as to really slow down the development work.
If you are not that new to this Usenet, you may have learned GNAT GPL is  
not the same as GNAT Pro, regarding bugs. Some bugs known for long in GNAT  
GPL, seems to be fixed since as much long in GNAT Pro.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:04:14 +0100, Maciej Sobczak  
<see.my.homepage@gmail.com> a écrit:
> recently) C#, so it might be a good platform for comparisons. From
> these, only Python proved to be problematic on 64-bit platforms due to
> internal interpreter bugs. C++, Java and C# did not exhibit *any*
> problems related to compilers or runtime libraries.
C# on Mono or .NET ?

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:04:14 +0100, Maciej Sobczak  
<see.my.homepage@gmail.com> a écrit:
> What are the alternatives for small companies that want to use Ada?
> I don't know, really. I have approached Aonix (now Atego), but they
> have apparently frozen 15 years ago and stopped responding when I
> mentioned that I need Ada 2005 features. Rational is out of question
> if its price range is as described in another post. SofCheck might be
> a viable solution - but then the price difference (reminder: g++ costs
> 0$) is another factor to take into account.
Some times ago in this Usenet, we made some wish for AdaCore to release a  
bug-free version of GNAT for a price ranging in 150 to 300$. Some ones  
says they already received such wishes many years ago, but rejected these.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:06:22 +0100, Thomas Løcke <tl@ada-dk.org> a écrit:
> This is most disheartening.
>
> Maybe we would all have been better off, if Ada 2012 had instead been
> named Ada 2021 and the next 10 years spent on making current Ada
> compilers actually support Ada 95 and Ada 2005 features without error.
>
> Why add a bunch of new features, if the old ones still aren't fully
> operational?
There is no requirement for any Ada 2012 compiler, to be ready for 2012.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 10 Mar 2011 09:26:20 +0100, Nasser M. Abbasi <nma@12000.org> a  
écrit:
> I think it is by 'law' that an ISO standard language needs to be
> updated every 5 or so years?
>
> Something to keep the language lawyers busy all the time :)
>
> As an effect of this, one can see that computer languages start
> simple, and in couple of decades they all become so complicated
> and complex to use. Then a new simple language comes along,
> and the cycle starts again.
>
> This happens to all languages, look at the new FORTRAN. If you
> think Ada is complex and has lots of features, you need to
> look at new Fortran.
>
> Also, Look at Java now, it started as a simple language in 1995,
> now I find it the language very complicated with all the additions
> made to it.
You may be comparing things the wrong way. May be Ada is just covering  
many areas. This is not the same as covering one area with many  
complications.


> I miss turbo pascal now ;)
>
> --Nasser
Wake me some good memories too :)


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 11 Mar 2011 10:40:54 +0100, Hoàng Đình Long <long.hdi@gmail.com> a  
écrit:
> Well, I agree with you on the complexity Java has become. But I think
> Lisp is an exception of "the cycle" you were talking about :D
Did you ever heard about Common Lisp ? Even Prolog suffered from this. Its  
original authors, I do not remember which one of Alain Colmerauer or  
Philippe Roussel, complained in a paper, that he had to face “cool  
feature” requests, all unrelated to Prolog essence, from everywhere. He  
tried to reject most of these, but had to agree to some.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:31:46 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> The  difference
> between 80's (when Ada and C++ were originated) and now is huge. Unless
> really new computing paradigms arise (quantum, molecular computing),
Will not be part of every-day use computers any way (this will target  
communication and security, mainly).

> it is
> perfectly clear how a good language must look like.
Precisely no. What it must look like comes with experience, and  
experiences requires some time. And when an update is made to answer  
requirements which came from previous experiences, these updates will be  
source of new experiences, and etc. This is a long time maturation  
process. The issue here may just be backward compatibility (and to not be  
forced to switch to any future standard), and there is no reason to  
complain this process takes long, as long as the material you already have  
is good enough.


>> BC++ is crap. If you have to target it, you can expect problems and I
>> can understand that the combination with the other two is problematic.
>
> How a company which produced the first people's C++ compiler managed to
> achieve this pitiful state 20 years later?
Turbo Borland C++ was not good even since its early days (my first contact  
with C++, with with Turbo Borland C++).

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Wright]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Some times ago in this Usenet, we made some wish for AdaCore to
> release a bug-free version of GNAT for a price ranging in 150 to 300$.

Bug-free?

There is no amount of money large enough to grant us that wish.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:38:06 +0100, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:31:46 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a �crit:
>> The  difference
>> between 80's (when Ada and C++ were originated) and now is huge. Unless
>> really new computing paradigms arise (quantum, molecular computing),
> Will not be part of every-day use computers any way (this will target  
> communication and security, mainly).

If usable, they will replace old computers within a decade. The life cycle
of a computer is very short.

>> it is
>> perfectly clear how a good language must look like.
> Precisely no. What it must look like comes with experience, and  
> experiences requires some time.

30+ years is enough on any account.

> The issue here may just be backward compatibility (and to not be  
> forced to switch to any future standard),

It is always taken as an excuse not to do vital changes, note, before even
considering how these changes might look like.

You cannot improve language by small incremental changes. If you want this
then keeping it backward compatible is only possible by a big structural
change.

>>> BC++ is crap. If you have to target it, you can expect problems and I
>>> can understand that the combination with the other two is problematic.
>>
>> How a company which produced the first people's C++ compiler managed to
>> achieve this pitiful state 20 years later?

> Turbo Borland C++ was not good even since its early days (my first contact  
> with C++, with with Turbo Borland C++).

It was better than most contemporary C++ compilers.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Thu, 10 Mar 2011 22:35:04 +0100, Gautier write-only  
<gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com> a écrit:
> You need to convince people what would be the advantage of switching
> to Ada.
> One mean (perhaps the only one, in absence of any hype or buzz effect)
> is to invest some time making a program in Ada that is working a lot
> better (faster, more reliable, user-friendly) than an existing one,
> and show it around. And that not for the fun of doing it in Ada, but
> because in the end it can deliver results to the company and it has a
> better software to use/sell.

Wise

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:42:07 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a  
écrit:
> Bug-free?
>
> There is no amount of money large enough to grant us that wish.
Well, mainly these boring bugs with synchronized interface and limited.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:58:08 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> If usable, they will replace old computers within a decade. The life  
> cycle
> of a computer is very short.
With each algorithms being the result of a big mathematical challenge,  
difficult to see what could be the every-day-use target applications. I  
tried to look at some “tutorials” last year (ouch, and they dare to name  
this, “tutorials”!)… I gave up. Two-states based computer are light years  
simpler than that. On the contrary, I believe boolean computer still have  
a long life ahead (and there is no bin big enough for millions of todays  
computers), along with these new machines.


> It is always taken as an excuse not to do vital changes, note, before  
> even
> considering how these changes might look like.
>
> You cannot improve language by small incremental changes. If you want  
> this
> then keeping it backward compatible is only possible by a big structural
> change.
You are right on these points, except that theory is not practice; just a  
very few things can happens so much suddenly in the human kind worlds.  
Even life evolved tiny-step by tiny-step (yes, I known live beings are  
full of defects, to not talk about human beings).

Could you tell more about “keeping it backward compatible is only possible  
by a big structural change” ?



-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Sun, 13 Mar 2011 13:17:51 +0100, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 12:58:08 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
>> If usable, they will replace old computers within a decade. The life cycle
>> of a computer is very short.
> With each algorithms being the result of a big mathematical challenge,  
> difficult to see what could be the every-day-use target applications.

There will be other algorithms if the paradigm really change.

> I tried to look at some “tutorials” last year (ouch, and they dare to name  
> this, “tutorials”!)… I gave up.

New concepts are difficult to gasp. Someone posted a link to an article
about a Lisp clone proposed! (:-))

> Two-states based computer are light years simpler than that.

Proponents of abacus would say same about modern computers.

>> It is always taken as an excuse not to do vital changes, note, before even
>> considering how these changes might look like.
>>
>> You cannot improve language by small incremental changes. If you want  
>> this then keeping it backward compatible is only possible by a big structural
>> change.
> You are right on these points, except that theory is not practice; just a  
> very few things can happens so much suddenly in the human kind worlds.

Language is not a physical system. You can change anything you wanted, you
just have to wish it.

> Even life evolved tiny-step by tiny-step (yes, I known live beings are  
> full of defects, to not talk about human beings).

Really? I was always amused by the natural selection theory. Well,
biologists never cared to learn statistics. But how could DNA evolve by
tiny steps? Where is selection and evolution of DNA encodings? If it was
before why is it on hold now? Looks like some standardization committee
drafted it and managed to enforce one standard across all living species...

> Could you tell more about “keeping it backward compatible is only possible  
> by a big structural change” ?

Per generalization: you express obsolete features in terms of new ones.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Lucretia]

> And that's why pretty much nobody who wants to evaluate embedded Ada on their own (as opposed to getting paid to do so) will make the effort.  It's up to an Ada tool vendor, perhaps in cooperation with a board vendor, to provide an out-of-the-box solution.

Actually, you can do this already and you can customise the runtime (search for configurable within system.ads) so that you only provide a limited set of features. See https://github.com/Lucretia/tamp where I do exactly that to provide a zero footprint runtime for bare boards. It does take an age to compile due to building acats on the native compiler as well.

Luke.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 13 Mar, 11:24, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr>
wrote:

> If you are not that new to this Usenet, you may have learned GNAT GPL is  
> not the same as GNAT Pro, regarding bugs. Some bugs known for long in GNAT  
> GPL, seems to be fixed since as much long in GNAT Pro.

And what is the purpose of maintaining this difference?
Is it to motivate newcomers to buy GNAT Pro or rather to discourage
them completely and let them use C++/Java/.NET instead?

As far as I'm concerned, GNAT GPL represents the current state of
technology that AdaCore sells to commercial customers. That is, I can
see it and treat the GPL package for evaluation and then go buy the
Pro package once I decide that I need it. Seems logical to me.

Note: I cannot be wrong in the above. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still
right. This is because I'm the potential customer - if I get the
impression that GNAT is crap, then they just lost the chance to sell
me anything, even if in fact Pro is better than GPL. Lesson: don't
play with impressions, always make good ones.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 13 Mar, 11:29, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr>
wrote:

> > it might be a good platform for comparisons. From
> > these, only Python proved to be problematic on 64-bit platforms due to
> > internal interpreter bugs. C++, Java and C# did not exhibit *any*
> > problems related to compilers or runtime libraries.
>
> C# on Mono or .NET ?

On .NET.

Mono is not on our target list - yet. This might change depending on
actual interest.

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.inspirel.com/

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Thomas Løcke]

On 2011-03-13 22:43, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> Note: I cannot be wrong in the above. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still
> right. This is because I'm the potential customer - if I get the
> impression that GNAT is crap, then they just lost the chance to sell
> me anything, even if in fact Pro is better than GPL. Lesson: don't
> play with impressions, always make good ones.


I heartily agree.

-- 
Thomas L�cke

Email: tl at ada-dk.org
Web: http//:ada-dk.org
http://identi.ca/thomaslocke

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Wright]

Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> writes:

> On 13 Mar, 11:24, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) <yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr>
> wrote:
>
>> If you are not that new to this Usenet, you may have learned GNAT GPL is  
>> not the same as GNAT Pro, regarding bugs. Some bugs known for long in GNAT  
>> GPL, seems to be fixed since as much long in GNAT Pro.
>
> And what is the purpose of maintaining this difference?
> Is it to motivate newcomers to buy GNAT Pro or rather to discourage
> them completely and let them use C++/Java/.NET instead?
>
> As far as I'm concerned, GNAT GPL represents the current state of
> technology that AdaCore sells to commercial customers. That is, I can
> see it and treat the GPL package for evaluation and then go buy the
> Pro package once I decide that I need it. Seems logical to me.
>
> Note: I cannot be wrong in the above. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still
> right. This is because I'm the potential customer - if I get the
> impression that GNAT is crap, then they just lost the chance to sell
> me anything, even if in fact Pro is better than GPL. Lesson: don't
> play with impressions, always make good ones.

I'm no longer in a position to look at supported versions, but I'm not
at all sure that Pro is that much better than GPL (treating it as just a
compiler and disregarding AdaCore's support offering, which is what
you're actually paying for). I certainly don't recognise Yannick's
remarks.

Pro 6.3.2 was ~ June 2010, based on GCC 4.3, and as far as I can tell
GPL 2010 was pretty much the same. There hadn't been another Pro release
by 1 Jan 2011, and the current release is 6.4.1 of 16 Feb 2011, based on
4.5.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:35:06 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> There will be other algorithms if the paradigm really change.
>
>> I tried to look at some “tutorials” last year (ouch, and they dare to  
>> name
>> this, “tutorials”!)… I gave up.
>
> New concepts are difficult to gasp. Someone posted a link to an article
> about a Lisp clone proposed! (:-))
>
>> Two-states based computer are light years simpler than that.
>
> Proponents of abacus would say same about modern computers.
Don't know that Abacus, will search the web about it. I though “seems  
there is no elementary component, looks likes everything is a big complex  
system which cannot be broken down to be understood”. May be I just faced  
too much low level documents or bad tutorials, who know (and I am really  
bad at most branch of mathematics)

But there will still be troubles about what to do with all of these  
nowadays computer (even sadly famous Africa's bin will not be big enough).  
So I still hope boolean computers will have a long life ahead, at least  
for that single reason.

> Language is not a physical system. You can change anything you wanted,  
> you
> just have to wish it.
Life is not a physical system neither, its only based on a physical  
system. So I maintain ability of life to face an environment and ability  
of a language paradigm to face an environment, are comparable. If you are  
interested in the topic, you should know what life is, could be expressed  
in some other abstract ways, getting ride of carbon and water. The  
physical system is just the starting point, this does characterize the  
system, which is abstract.

>> Could you tell more about “keeping it backward compatible is only  
>> possible
>> by a big structural change” ?
>
> Per generalization: you express obsolete features in terms of new ones.
That would mean to keep the syntax and the same meaning assigned to  
existing syntactic construct and redefine the core concepts of the  
language only ? I feel this may be feasible with greater separation of  
both. We may have three documents instead of two : an Ada Abstract Syntax  
and Paradigm reference document, and Ada Concrete Syntax standard document  
and and Ada Rational more or less formal document discussing both. To keep  
it simple, is that something like that you are thinking about ?


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:43:48 +0100, Maciej Sobczak  
<see.my.homepage@gmail.com> a écrit:
> As far as I'm concerned, GNAT GPL represents the current state of
> technology that AdaCore sells to commercial customers. That is, I can
> see it and treat the GPL package for evaluation and then go buy the
> Pro package once I decide that I need it. Seems logical to me.
>
> Note: I cannot be wrong in the above. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still
> right. This is because I'm the potential customer - if I get the
> impression that GNAT is crap, then they just lost the chance to sell
> me anything, even if in fact Pro is better than GPL. Lesson: don't
> play with impressions, always make good ones.
The areas where bugs occurs in GNAT GPL, are not the mainly used areas  
(you may really build entire systems without any use of these areas). You  
are only facing these bugs where you've already learned enough of Ada. So  
this can be seen as an acceptable overview of GNAT products. Note: I am  
just replying to the exact point of your message, not about  
disappointments of GNAT GPL users, which is another story.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:09:40 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org> a  
écrit:
> I'm no longer in a position to look at supported versions, but I'm not
> at all sure that Pro is that much better than GPL (treating it as just a
> compiler and disregarding AdaCore's support offering, which is what
> you're actually paying for). I certainly don't recognise Yannick's
> remarks.
>
> Pro 6.3.2 was ~ June 2010, based on GCC 4.3, and as far as I can tell
> GPL 2010 was pretty much the same. There hadn't been another Pro release
> by 1 Jan 2011, and the current release is 6.4.1 of 16 Feb 2011, based on
> 4.5.

Did you used GNAT Pro your self ? What I said was based of some comments  
 from GNAT Pro users, which I trusted. I oftenly talked about these  
boring/exhausting bugs in GNAT GPL, and multiple GNAT Pro users replied  
these are fixed since long in GNAT Pro. I can trust only, as I do not know  
GNAT Pro.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:20:00 +0100, KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
a écrit:
> Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> included tasking library) because I have done it.

A question aside: what is the typical real-life usage of these kind of  
board ? And what is the typical kind of application to be run on these  
board ? (I do not know anything about embedded systems, I just know  
desktop and server computers).

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sat, 12 Mar 2011 13:47:53 +0100, Stephen Leake  
<stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org> a écrit:
> The Ada runtime requires more work than the typical C runtime, because
> of tasking, exceptions, fixed point types, and other issues.
Is fixed point types a really hard to solve issue ? Even before I knew Ada  
and its fixed point type, I used something similar on an old PC where  
there was no floating point unit. I though about a way to re-interpret  
integers, which is finally close to what fixed points are (this was for a  
tiny 3D application). I did not get into real troubles with this.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 18:55:26 +0100, Lucretia <Lucretia9000@yahoo.co.uk> a  
écrit:

>> And that's why pretty much nobody who wants to evaluate embedded Ada on  
>> their own (as opposed to getting paid to do so) will make the effort.   
>> It's up to an Ada tool vendor, perhaps in cooperation with a board  
>> vendor, to provide an out-of-the-box solution.
>
> Actually, you can do this already and you can customise the runtime  
> (search for configurable within system.ads) so that you only provide a  
> limited set of features. See https://github.com/Lucretia/tamp where I do  
> exactly that to provide a zero footprint runtime for bare boards. It  
> does take an age to compile due to building acats on the native compiler  
> as well.
>
> Luke.
Please, let us know about any other material you may know about  
creating/modifying the GNAT Ada runtime. This is useful not only for  
people targeting embedded boards, but also for people who wish to drop  
some specific system dependencies or who complains “GNAT binaries are too  
big” (a complain I often saw on misc sites and forums). I am bookmarking  
the link you provided.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 03:38:25 +0100, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:35:06 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
> <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
>> There will be other algorithms if the paradigm really change.
>>
>>> I tried to look at some “tutorials” last year (ouch, and they dare to  
>>> name
>>> this, “tutorials”!)… I gave up.
>>
>> New concepts are difficult to gasp. Someone posted a link to an article
>> about a Lisp clone proposed! (:-))
>>
>>> Two-states based computer are light years simpler than that.
>>
>> Proponents of abacus would say same about modern computers.

> Don't know that Abacus,

Oh, you certainly do:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus

> will search the web about it. I though “seems  
> there is no elementary component, looks likes everything is a big complex  
> system which cannot be broken down to be understood”.

"Understood in terms of Boolean logic," you mean. That's the point, a
really new paradigm cannot be understood in terms of the old one. That is
why it is new. In particular the probability cannot described in crisp
terms. So any attempt to "understand" it that way, e.g. the theory of
hidden parameter, is doomed.

> But there will still be troubles about what to do with all of these  
> nowadays computer (even sadly famous Africa's bin will not be big enough).

What happened with the horses when cars came? Who cares?
  
>> Language is not a physical system. You can change anything you wanted, you
>> just have to wish it.
> Life is not a physical system neither, its only based on a physical  
> system. So I maintain ability of life to face an environment and ability  
> of a language paradigm to face an environment, are comparable. If you are  
> interested in the topic, you should know what life is, could be expressed  
> in some other abstract ways, getting ride of carbon and water. The  
> physical system is just the starting point, this does characterize the  
> system, which is abstract.

So? It seems that your argument would be that given the knowledge of the
human DNA code, one couldn't produce a human being 100 million years ago by
means of genetic engineering? Rubbish.

>>> Could you tell more about “keeping it backward compatible is only possible
>>> by a big structural change” ?
>>
>> Per generalization: you express obsolete features in terms of new ones.
> That would mean to keep the syntax and the same meaning assigned to  
> existing syntactic construct and redefine the core concepts of the  
> language only ?

Yes. There is nothing wrong with the most of Ada. Even if some parts are
wrong, like limited results/aggregates are. That is no problem. In the new
language limitness will be redesigned anyway. You will rather have
independent type properties "by-reference," "no-copy-constructor,"
"no-assignment." Ada's "limited" will be expressed in those terms.
Aggregates will become syntax sugar for user-defined constructors.
Obsolescent "limited" types will have them predefined. etc. Not a big deal.

> I feel this may be feasible with greater separation of both.

There is no clear margin. Just move the stuff to the ARM's section J.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 13, 8:17 pm, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Le Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:20:00 +0100, KK6GM <mjsi...@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
> a écrit:
>
> A question aside: what is the typical real-life usage of these kind of  
> board ? And what is the typical kind of application to be run on these  
> board ? (I do not know anything about embedded systems, I just know  
> desktop and server computers).

Wow, that's a big question.  Just imagine all the processors in a
modern car.  For that matter, imagine all the processors in a modern
aircraft.  Motor control is a big area, for example.  Appliances of
all varieties.  All types of applications that read sensors, drive
outputs of various kinds, have comms with other parts of the system,
and perhaps have a user interface.  These applications can greatly
benefit from Ada's concurrency and realtime features (and often, fixed-
point as well).  That is, of course, in addition to all the other
benefits of Ada.  There are billions of microcontrollers shipped each
year that are not running Windows or Linux, but rather are running a
smaller, tighter RTOS or are not running any RTOS at all.  Ada is an
excellent fit for all but the low end of this market - certainly as
good a fit as C++.

IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.  But there
seems to be no easy way to make that happen, and it needs to be easy
or they won't bother.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[jonathan]

> On 11.03.11 16:20, KK6GM wrote:
>
> > Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> > its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> > (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> > by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> > toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> > possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> > included tasking library) because I have done it.

I've compiled some more details on the Mindstorm nxt below .. looks
promising. Maybe it's not quite what you have mind, but tell us what
we should do to make it closer to what you have in mind.


J.



"Lego Mindstorms NXT"  wikipedia article:

  A port of GNAT is available for the NXT. It relies
  on a dedicated run-time kernel based on the Ravenscar
  profile, the same used on the Goce satellite: this
  permits to use high-level Ada features to develop
  concurrent and real-time systems on the MINDSTORMS NXT.


Here's a snip from the adacore libre site:

http://libre.adacore.com/libre/tools/mindstorms/

  [Unlike] the 2009 release of GNAT GPL for the LEGO
  MINDSTORMS NXT, the 2010 release does not rely on any
  operating system: it is an Ada-only bareboard solution
  leveraging on Ada 2005 features for concurrent and
  real-time behaviour.

  Here’s what’s included:

    * Support for the Ravenscar profile to bring Ada-level
      tasking to the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT

    * Support for Ada 2005 and a preview of Ada 2012

    * Support for SPARK and RavenSPARK

    * High-level drivers for the NXT brick, sensors
      and motors, including Bluetooth, written in Ada

    * Getting Started material and examples of applications
      which can be used as teaching material


hardware description in UK commercial advertisement:

http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=9841&cn=17&d=70

  Mindstorms NXT Brick includes:
  Flash memory
  32-bit ARM7 microprocessor.
  Support for Bluetooth wireless communication.
  1 USB 2.0 port.
  4 input ports.
  3 output ports.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:15:22 +0100, KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
a écrit:
> IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
> features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.  But there
> seems to be no easy way to make that happen, and it needs to be easy
> or they won't bother.
Could emulation running on PC be an option in that area ?

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 05:15:22 -0700 (PDT), KK6GM wrote:

> IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
> features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.

And Ada's fixed-point arithmetic. People are writing everything first in
double and then run monstrous tests in order to verify that the system's
behaviour wouldn't change when double is replaced by a home-brewed integer
emulation of fixed point. In Ada one could just define the target type
right from the start and spare all the mess.

> But there
> seems to be no easy way to make that happen, and it needs to be easy
> or they won't bother.

Yes.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 14, 6:41 am, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)
<yannick_duch...@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:15:22 +0100, KK6GM <mjsi...@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
> a écrit:> IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
> > features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.  But there
> > seems to be no easy way to make that happen, and it needs to be easy
> > or they won't bother.
>
> Could emulation running on PC be an option in that area ?

I don't see much advantage to that, outside of a classroom
environment.  These embedded systems connect to actual hardware, and
very often perform closed loop control.  And every situation will be
different.  I know I would want to connect real hardware to my real
inputs and outputs and perform real, live control, if I had any hopes
of selling Ada to the group.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:41:43 +0100, Yannick Duch�ne (Hibou57) wrote:

> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 13:15:22 +0100, KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
> a �crit:
>> IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
>> features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.  But there
>> seems to be no easy way to make that happen, and it needs to be easy
>> or they won't bother.
> Could emulation running on PC be an option in that area ?

It is. PC runs all sorts of models. Problems arise when models need to be
ported to the target platform. You cannot emulate the target because of the
sensors and actuators attached. Often a "by-pass" is used to access them.
E.g. you use the target board only for I/O, the control loop runs on
another, more powerful board (but still not a PC, because cycles are very
tight). Ada's portability has a huge potential here.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 14, 7:00 am, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Mar 2011 05:15:22 -0700 (PDT), KK6GM wrote:
> > IMO, if an embedded engineer can try out Ada's tasking and realtime
> > features on a typical piece of hardware, they'll be sold.
>
> And Ada's fixed-point arithmetic. People are writing everything first in
> double and then run monstrous tests in order to verify that the system's
> behaviour wouldn't change when double is replaced by a home-brewed integer
> emulation of fixed point. In Ada one could just define the target type
> right from the start and spare all the mess.

Definitely agree - Ada's fixed-point is a hidden gem for embedded
programming.  It makes me crazy that the industry has ignored Ada the
way it has.  But the tool vendors haven't made much effort that I can
see to change things either.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[KK6GM]

On Mar 14, 5:18 am, jonathan <johns...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > On 11.03.11 16:20, KK6GM wrote:
>
> > > Are you saying that a relative newcomer to Ada can take a board out of
> > > its shipping box in the early evening and be running Ada code
> > > (including tasking - Ravenscar would be fine - and realtime features)
> > > by later that evening?  I'd sure like to discover the board and
> > > toolset that allows this, because I'll buy one today.  I know this is
> > > possible with at least one C/C++ toolset (Rowley Crossworks with its
> > > included tasking library) because I have done it.
>
> I've compiled some more details on the Mindstorm nxt below .. looks
> promising. Maybe it's not quite what you have mind, but tell us what
> we should do to make it closer to what you have in mind.

I'm definitely going to take a look, especially since it is a bare-
board port, and moving to other ARM7 parts should presumably be rather
simple.  I'm a little intimidated at the thought of trying to build
the GNAT tools - never tried that before.  But the benefits would be
great.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Peter C. Chapin]

On Mon, 14 Mar 2011, KK6GM wrote:

>> Could emulation running on PC be an option in that area ?
>
> I don't see much advantage to that, outside of a classroom environment. 
> These embedded systems connect to actual hardware, and very often perform 
> closed loop control.  And every situation will be different.  I know I 
> would want to connect real hardware to my real inputs and outputs and 
> perform real, live control, if I had any hopes of selling Ada to the 
> group.

I'll echo this sentiment. Nothing is as convincing is watching actual 
hardware do actual work. Simulated environments definitely have their place 
but at the end of the day I'd want to see a real machine running my code. In 
particular there are often hidden issues that don't appear until you try to 
run on real hardware (or issues that only appear in simulation that just end 
up being distracting). Certainly someone interested in real time behavior 
will want to see how things work on a real machine.

Peter

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:00:17 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov  
<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> a écrit:
> And Ada's fixed-point arithmetic. People are writing everything first in
> double and then run monstrous tests in order to verify that the system's
> behaviour wouldn't change when double is replaced by a home-brewed  
> integer
> emulation of fixed point. In Ada one could just define the target type
> right from the start and spare all the mess.
What a clever underline! The community is thanking you.

… really, good idea.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:09:12 +0100, KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com>  
a écrit:
> Definitely agree - Ada's fixed-point is a hidden gem for embedded
> programming.  It makes me crazy that the industry has ignored Ada the
> way it has.
Not only it ignores Ada, but fixed-point too (to be exact). I suspect  
advertising requirements to have an impact here: wiiide floating points  
talks to many people as a must; fixed point talks to no-one.


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Pascal Obry]

Le 14/03/2011 03:57, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) a écrit :
> Did you used GNAT Pro your self ? What I said was based of some comments
> from GNAT Pro users, which I trusted. I oftenly talked about these
> boring/exhausting bugs in GNAT GPL, and multiple GNAT Pro users replied
> these are fixed since long in GNAT Pro. I can trust only, as I do not
> know GNAT Pro.

Since how long? And here we are speaking about *releases*, but GNAT Pro 
customers have access to wavefronts with fixes done between releases.

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|    http://www.obry.net  -  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 14.03.11 15:42, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) wrote:
> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:09:12 +0100, KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com> a
> écrit:
>> Definitely agree - Ada's fixed-point is a hidden gem for embedded
>> programming.  It makes me crazy that the industry has ignored Ada the
>> way it has.
> Not only it ignores Ada, but fixed-point too (to be exact). I suspect
> advertising requirements to have an impact here: wiiide floating points talks
> to many people as a must; fixed point talks to no-one.

Are you sure people ignore fixed-point?
I have heared of both fixed point code generators (that output C)
and sentences like "Welcome to the world of scaling".

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:17:49 +0100, Georg Bauhaus  
<rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit:
> Are you sure people ignore fixed-point?
> I have heared of both fixed point code generators (that output C)
Oh sorry so. May be I have to guess my environment is too much narrow. The  
only place where I can see reference to this, is here and often see proud  
exposure of floating points. Well, just forget my erroneous comment, as it  
appears to be.

> and sentences like "Welcome to the world of scaling".
Did not understood


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Niklas Holsti]

jonathan wrote:

> "Lego Mindstorms NXT"  wikipedia article:
> 
>   A port of GNAT is available for the NXT. It relies
>   on a dedicated run-time kernel based on the Ravenscar
>   profile, the same used on the Goce satellite: 

Just to avoid a misunderstanding or misreading of the above: I am rather 
certain that the similarity between GNAT for NXT and the GOCE satellite 
is limited to both using kernels that implement the Ravenscar profile; I 
do not think they can use the same kernel. GOCE uses a Ravenscar kernel 
delivered with the ERC32 (SPARC V7) Ada compiler from XGC Technology 
(www.xgc.com), and I believe that this kernel is not available for the 
ARM7/NXT.

-- 
Niklas Holsti
Tidorum Ltd
niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Wright]

"Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> writes:

> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:09:40 +0100, Simon Wright <simon@pushface.org>
> a écrit:
>> I'm no longer in a position to look at supported versions, but I'm
>> not at all sure that Pro is that much better than GPL (treating it as
>> just a compiler and disregarding AdaCore's support offering, which is
>> what you're actually paying for). I certainly don't recognise
>> Yannick's remarks.
>>
>> Pro 6.3.2 was ~ June 2010, based on GCC 4.3, and as far as I can tell
>> GPL 2010 was pretty much the same. There hadn't been another Pro
>> release by 1 Jan 2011, and the current release is 6.4.1 of 16 Feb
>> 2011, based on 4.5.
>
> Did you used GNAT Pro your self ? What I said was based of some
> comments from GNAT Pro users, which I trusted. I oftenly talked about
> these boring/exhausting bugs in GNAT GPL, and multiple GNAT Pro users
> replied these are fixed since long in GNAT Pro. I can trust only, as I
> do not know GNAT Pro.

The project I worked on was an Ada95 project which - for reasons I won't
bore you with - was stuck on a very old GNAT Pro release (and found very
few bugs). So I don't have hard experience of using up-to-date features
in GNAT Pro vs GPL.

There do seem to be more changes than I was expecting between 6.3.2 and
2010; 274 changed files out of 1970 in GPL. (This was after using J-P
Rosen's 'normalize' utility).

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Florian Weimer]

* Simon Wright:

> I'm no longer in a position to look at supported versions, but I'm not
> at all sure that Pro is that much better than GPL (treating it as just a
> compiler and disregarding AdaCore's support offering, which is what
> you're actually paying for). I certainly don't recognise Yannick's
> remarks.

And we should not forget that customer support often consists of
finding a suitable workaround, not about fixing the underlying bug.
To some degree, this is what customers want.  I suspect few shops are
able to roll out a new GNAT version to all their developers and across
their build infrastructure without much effort.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Florian Weimer]

* Ludovic Brenta:

> Things are not as bleak as Maciej makes them seem; by his own admission,
> most of the bugs he encountered were with interfaces.  The system I work
> on consists of 1.5 million lines of Ada and has been in existence for
> almost 20 years.  I would not say we spend 50% of our time reporting and
> working around compiler bugs; the real figure is probably 1% for us,
> below noise level.  That's probably because we don't use interfaces :)

If you're in the industry and have received professional training,
you're following the beaten path, sticking to what is known to work.
(Nothing wrong with that, up to a degree.)  I have never received any
formal Ada training, and I share Maciej's experience to some extent.
This goes back years, to the pre-Ada-2005 days---I once found a bug in
GNAT's implementation of scalar out parameters.  When I ported my
application to Ada 2005 (some porting was required because I used
limited return types, even in a way which was completely correct and
safe in Ada 95), I (re)discovered a fair number of bugs, including
wrong code generation without even using Ada 2005 features.

For me, Ada and GNAT are pretty unusual in this regard; I do not
experience this phenomenon in other programming environments.  But Ada
95 was one of the few languages where I felt up to the task of
deciding whether any given program was correctly compiled or not.
With other languages, I tend to keep tinkering until things work in
some way.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Wright]

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> writes:

> * Simon Wright:
>
>> I'm no longer in a position to look at supported versions, but I'm not
>> at all sure that Pro is that much better than GPL (treating it as just a
>> compiler and disregarding AdaCore's support offering, which is what
>> you're actually paying for). I certainly don't recognise Yannick's
>> remarks.
>
> And we should not forget that customer support often consists of
> finding a suitable workaround, not about fixing the underlying bug.
> To some degree, this is what customers want.  I suspect few shops are
> able to roll out a new GNAT version to all their developers and across
> their build infrastructure without much effort.

Indeed, this is exactly what we wanted. It would have been more fun to
roll out each new release and wavefront, but a stable environment is
much more important.

And, as someone else said, a new release brings new bugs.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2011-03-14, Yannick Duch�ne <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:17:49 +0100, Georg Bauhaus  
><rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a �crit:
>> and sentences like "Welcome to the world of scaling".
> Did not understood
>

For example, if you needed to implement code which handled values to (say)
3 decimal places, you could just multiply the value by 1000 and treat it
as a integer internally.

Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Ludovic Brenta]

Florian Weimer writes:
> * Ludovic Brenta:
>
>> Things are not as bleak as Maciej makes them seem; by his own
>> admission, most of the bugs he encountered were with interfaces.  The
>> system I work on consists of 1.5 million lines of Ada and has been in
>> existence for almost 20 years.  I would not say we spend 50% of our
>> time reporting and working around compiler bugs; the real figure is
>> probably 1% for us, below noise level.  That's probably because we
>> don't use interfaces :)
>
> If you're in the industry and have received professional training,
> you're following the beaten path, sticking to what is known to work.

I learned Ada by myself in 2003 and then worked in avionics (no tagged
types, let alone interfaces) and then on a long-term-support application
that started in Ada 83 and now uses only a few Ada 2005 features like
the extended return statement for build-in-place limited types.

> (Nothing wrong with that, up to a degree.)  I have never received any
> formal Ada training, and I share Maciej's experience to some extent.

I think I know something about GNAT bugs :) The bugs that I have found
have never been blocking for me; a workaround was almost always very
easy to find.  (I still duly reported all bugs I found to AdaCore, of
course).  As a consequence, the time I spend fighting, or even
reporting, compiler bugs is negligible.  I just wanted to give another
data point to show that mileage does vary widely.

[...]
> With other languages, I tend to keep tinkering until things work in
> some way.

I work with Makefiles, C and Korn Shell scripts a lot.  Makefiles are
too cryptic for me to even try to figure out whether I can suspect a bug
in GNU make, so when writing Makefiles I do tinker until they work.  C
is too simple for compilers to still have bugs, nowadays (except for
back-end bugs like code generation, but I only use mainstream targets
where such bugs are unlikely).  OTOH, at work we've discovered a pair of
mysterious bugs in zsh that even our professional mission-critical
support still has not fixed after a couple of years (yes, they're that
bizarre).  In fact, as the saying goes, the only tool where we (at
Eurocontrol) have never found a bug is "cat" :)

-- 
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 14/03/2011 21:04, Simon Clubley a �crit :
> For example, if you needed to implement code which handled values to (say)
> 3 decimal places, you could just multiply the value by 1000 and treat it
> as a integer internally.
> 
> Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.
> 
Not that simple when it comes to multiplication and division. You need
to scale the result, and make sure you don't lose accuracy... i.e., do
all the work that the compiler does for you.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Adalog a d�m�nag� / Adalog has moved:
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Lucretia]

> Please, let us know about any other material you may know about  
> creating/modifying the GNAT Ada runtime. This is useful not only for  
> people targeting embedded boards, but also for people who wish to drop  
> some specific system dependencies or who complains “GNAT binaries are too  
> big” (a complain I often saw on misc sites and forums). I am bookmarking  
> the link you provided.

as for big binaries, this is referenced in the gnat manuals, using
sections and garbage collecting them in the linker.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 21:04:23 +0100, Simon Clubley  
<clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-earth.ufp> a écrit:

> On 2011-03-14, Yannick Duchêne <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr> wrote:
>> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:17:49 +0100, Georg Bauhaus
>> <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de> a écrit:
>>> and sentences like "Welcome to the world of scaling".
>> Did not understood
>>
>
> For example, if you needed to implement code which handled values to  
> (say)
> 3 decimal places, you could just multiply the value by 1000 and treat it
> as a integer internally.
>
> Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.
OK, I know (and used) that. I though he was referring to some other funny  
things with this funny sentence.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Simon Clubley]

On 2011-03-14, J-P. Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote:
> Le 14/03/2011 21:04, Simon Clubley a �crit :
>> For example, if you needed to implement code which handled values to (say)
>> 3 decimal places, you could just multiply the value by 1000 and treat it
>> as a integer internally.
>> 
>> Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.
>> 
> Not that simple when it comes to multiplication and division. You need
> to scale the result, and make sure you don't lose accuracy... i.e., do
> all the work that the compiler does for you.
>

Quite true; I should have given a more detailed response.

Ada is just a personal interest of mine but I am employed as a developer
in a business environment so I am very familiar with using fixed point
operations in code and it seems quite natural to me.

It does surprise me therefore how little I see fixed point calculations
been used in other environments.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:12:39 +0100, J-P. Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> a écrit:
>> Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.
>>
> Not that simple when it comes to multiplication and division. You need
> to scale the result, and make sure you don't lose accuracy... i.e., do
> all the work that the compiler does for you.
If you know some good on-line papers to read about, please, let me know :)


-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.

“I am fluent in ASCII” [Warren 2010]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 15/03/2011 13:11, Simon Clubley a �crit :
> It does surprise me therefore how little I see fixed point calculations
> been used in other environments.
> 
Quite true. Most people think "floating point" as soon as they see a
point in a number (with the exception of Cobol people ;-) ). Of course,
if Java had fixed points...

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Adalog a d�m�nag� / Adalog has moved:
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[J-P. Rosen]

Le 15/03/2011 15:55, Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57) a écrit :
> Le Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:12:39 +0100, J-P. Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr> a écrit:
>>> Ie: 123.456 becomes 123456 and 345.45 becomes 345450.
>>>
>> Not that simple when it comes to multiplication and division. You need
>> to scale the result, and make sure you don't lose accuracy... i.e., do
>> all the work that the compiler does for you.
> If you know some good on-line papers to read about, please, let me know :)
> 

I can send you a paper version of the corresponding chapter of my PhD
thesis (implementation of fixed points in the Ada/Ed compiler).

Sorry, it's not on line (it was before the internet era), and in French,
but anyone interested can send me an address by private mail.

-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
           J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Adalog a déménagé / Adalog has moved:
2 rue du Docteur Lombard, 92441 Issy-les-Moulineaux CEDEX
Tel: +33 1 45 29 21 52, Fax: +33 1 45 29 25 00

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Marco]

On Wednesday, March 9, 2011 1:58:47 AM UTC-7, Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> Three things:
> 
> 1. Knowledge. Most companies do not even know that Ada exists
> (really!). 
   I agree most folks think it is dead or dying.

> 2. Availability of resource. This is not about people on the job
> market that are waiting to be employed, but about people that are
> already working for the company - are they willing to learn Ada? 

  No - paid professionals learn whatever language is needed.

> 
> 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> are either bug-ridden or outdated.

  Disagree - overpriced yes but there are good number of Ada 95 vendors out there with reasonably good products - Ada 2005 is similar to the C99 situation (new features that most compiler vendors won't implement)

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Maciej Sobczak]

On 25 Mar, 13:36, Marco <prenom_no...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> > 2. Availability of resource. This is not about people on the job
> > market that are waiting to be employed, but about people that are
> > already working for the company - are they willing to learn Ada?
>
>   No - paid professionals learn whatever language is needed.

No. This is for two reasons:

1. The notion of professional identity. People naturally attach
themselves to what they're doing and how they're doing it - they say
"I'm a Java programmer", "I'm a Python programmer", "I'm an Oracle
admin", "I'm a Windows admin", etc. By saying so, they express their
association. This notion makes it difficult to introduce new
technology in the team - especially when finding a new job is easier
than learning something new. Why on earth would anybody go through the
pain of learning anything if they can just go get another job across
the street? I can easily picture a typical Java programmer moving
elsewhere rather than learning Ada.

2. The notion of investment continuity. If somebody has already
invested let's say 5 years to learn something and become proficient in
it and gained production experience and peer respect in the given
technology, it is natural for them to continue the same path. Why on
earth would anybody choose to become a *beginner* again, which does
not look like a career progression at all?

These two reasons make it difficult to introduce Ada in an existing
working environment.

If you argue that such people are not professionals, I will disagree
in advance. I know people with this kind of attitude and I consider
them to be professionals in their respective specialties.

> > 3. Availability of reasonably robust and up to date compilers.
> > Unfortunately things are very bad for Ada in this regard - compilers
> > are either bug-ridden or outdated.
>
>   Disagree - overpriced yes but there are good number of Ada 95 vendors out there with reasonably good products - Ada 2005 is similar to the C99 situation (new features that most compiler vendors won't implement)

The analogy does not hold for two reasons:

1. The features that are not eagerly implemented in C99 are also not
eagerly expected by users, so there is no harm in keeping the status
quo. This is different in Ada, where interfaces (or complete MI) are
already overdue some 15 years, at least. They *must* work correctly,
especially when combined with other language features.

2. Ada and C99 do not belong to the same category and do not even
target the same audiences. For a better analogy you should compare Ada
with C++, as their feature sets, target systems and potential
audiences are more aligned. Ada has to compete with C++, not with C.

--
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.msobczak.com * http://www.inspirel.com

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Georg Bauhaus]

On 3/25/11 11:30 PM, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> On 25 Mar, 13:36, Marco<prenom_no...@yahoo.com>  wrote:
>
>>> 2. Availability of resource. This is not about people on the job
>>> market that are waiting to be employed, but about people that are
>>> already working for the company - are they willing to learn Ada?
>>
>>    No - paid professionals learn whatever language is needed.
>
> No. This is for two reasons:
>
> Why on earth would anybody go through the
> pain of learning anything

(Short summary of this lengthy letter, sorry:

- Learning can be a relief in comparison.
- Most jobs require learning, though of contemporary detail only.
-The job market typically does not allow choosing by language.
- Languages are not mainly compared by feature sets (and MI is
    typically not used).)

Learning isn't necessarily a pain.  Learning interesting things can
be rewarding. People like to talk about things they learn, that
proves it.  OTOH, Learning how to tackle a hodgepodge of contemporary and
not so contemporary components of typical systems is onerous work,
needs huge amounts of attention to disconnected notional systems, and
needs much learning of messy detail having little to do with programming
languages.
These jobs may not even be well paid.  Worse, once the system is at another
level satisfying the customer/manager/..., you can likely forget
the things you have learned on this job because the next hodgepodge
of a system requires different knowledge...

Learning another language is different. The language, or the techniques
can likely be used on another project, any many programmers seem to
be looking at interesting language features.

There is quite an amount of systems of the kind mentioned above.  The job
description is somewhat invariable, and leaves little room for such
entertaining things as learning programming languages.

If there is a job requiring attention to only two or three focal points
(let alone to just one! Ha!), a job that will entail the opportunity of
focused learning, then this kind of job is a *relief* in comparison.



> if they can just go get another job across
> the street?

Where's that street? ;-)  I'm only aware of auction job markets
that permit a kind of choice---for mere programmers.  If you are
a (modern version of) bookkeeper with some programming experience,
or an electrical engineer who has seen a few C programs or Fortran
programs, things differ.  The HR departments will be attentive,
since they can easily declare programming a background task...  This
situation, of course, leaves programming professionals behind.

Consider two fictional persons:

Person 1 claims in his CV:

Knows how to build measurement instruments.  Has studied
physics and chemistry.  Demonstrably knows C++ well.

Person 2 claims in his CV:

Knows how to build measurement instruments.  Has studied
mathematics  and philosophy.  Demonstrably knows Python well.

Will an HR person even look at (2) if there is a (1)?
Will they even test the comparative programming skills
of (1) and (2)?

What I am saying is that it is not typically up to the
programmers to choose a Job by what they prefer to do,
for example a programming language they know.

Choosing by programming language is a dream that a happy few
can live.


> 2. The notion of investment continuity. If somebody has already
> invested let's say 5 years to learn something and become proficient in
> it and gained production experience and peer respect in the given
> technology, it is natural for them to continue the same path. Why on
> earth would anybody choose to become a *beginner* again, which does
> not look like a career progression at all?

There are reasons. For example, Java world, backends.  If you are fed
up with maintaining throw-away software using someone else's fad du jour,
hipster framework 2.1 two years ago, is it any different across the
street?  Fed up with trying to understand the architecture
of an undocumented, cheapo system requiring a face lift and connecting it
to yet another set of soon-to-die acronym. IOW, if you are in the Java
brigade, I bet you would readily become a beginner again if that gives
your an opportunity to think, to learn, to develop assets less tangential.

Actually, there are these market forces, moving a project from
language X to language Y because of, for example, a company take-over.
In the office world, industry seems to prefer non-standard solutions.
There is plenty of opportunity to spend considerably expensive
amounts of time with archeological analysis of old Delphi programs,
C#->Java howtos  concerning mostly the library, and so on.
Little they teach CS majors about proper engineering of systems
is manifest in the office market.

> These two reasons make it difficult to introduce Ada in an existing
> working environment.
>
> If you argue that such people are not professionals, I will disagree
> in advance. I know people with this kind of attitude and I consider
> them to be professionals in their respective specialties.
>

> 1. The features that are not eagerly implemented in C99 are also not
> eagerly expected by users, so there is no harm in keeping the status
> quo. This is different in Ada, where interfaces (or complete MI) are
> already overdue some 15 years, at least. They *must* work correctly,
> especially when combined with other language features.

Speaking of professionals, which professionals find MI familiar?
Python professionals don't care.  Ruby professionals use mixins.
Java and C# professionals would know interfaces; maybe some
know how to use types with multiple interfaces.  Objective-C
professionals know multiple (class) protocols, but not since
long. There may be a number of C++ professionals who know MI.
Are there any statistics agreeing with the claim that MI (of
interfaces) is a language feature that is typically expected?

> 2. Ada and C99 do not belong to the same category and do not even
> target the same audiences.

Why not?  In their markets, C and Ada compete.   I'd not find it
surprising if the comparison will be biased away from comparing
technical feature sets of the languages.  According to Michael
Barr's survey, knowledge of technical features of the language
C is not the highest qualification of professionals.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Gerd]

On 11 Mrz., 09:37, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
wrote:
> Gerd <Gerd...@t-online.de> writes:
> > 2. Pricing for GNAT PRO would be to much for such a small development
> > team (I think they offer support for at leat 10 person teams). Our
> > customer will not pay more, only for the software to be written in
> > Ada.
>
> I don't understand this argument. Using Ada instead of C, I get easily a
> factor of 2 (I usually say 10, but let's be conservative) productivity.
>
> So you can use 2 people instead of 4, freeing up 2 for another project.

First you must have two more projects, otherwise the people will have
nothing to do.

BTW: Do you have any proof for the "factor of 2"?

Don't forget: software development is not only coding, but designing
and documentation, too.


> GNATPRO is around $25k per year.

This might be acceptable for a great company, specialised maybe in
aerospace. But - as I stated, we are a small engineering company. If
we could do one of ten projectes with Ada, spending 25$ per year would
be too much, to give us profit.


> What is the problem? I'm guessing you don't really believe the
> productivity factor.

Yes. Especally, the use of Ada for coding will not speed up the rest
of software lifecycle.


> > 3. Software development is not only done on Windows and Linux.
>
> Just out of curiosity, what development OS are you using? Or are you
> refering to the target OS?

You may believe it or not, but some of our customers (finance area)
will require us to develop on mainframe running z/OS (formerly known
as MVS). Of course this development is done using the customer
equipment (we don't have own mainframe).

And yes, there are also (very rare, but existing) projects to be done
on eComStation (OS/2).

Also yes, cross development for embedded targets is done on Windows.

And - the range of targets is wide, from bare board to OSEK and
CardOS. No VxWorks here.


> > 5. For a lot of projects not only a tool chain is needed, but a
> > "safety certified" tool chain is required.
>
> You seem to be implying that you can get a safety certified C toolchain
> for less than you would need to pay for GNATPRO.

Sure, for (MISRA-)C tool chains.


> will pay off (factor of 2 productivity).

Still missing a proof for this.

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Pascal Obry]

Gerd,

> Still missing a proof for this.

It seems incredible, but it is my experience and has been reported in 
this report (analysis based on multi-million line of code):

http://archive.adaic.com/intro/ada-vs-c/cada_art.html

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|    http://www.obry.net  -  http://v2p.fr.eu.org
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-key F949BD3B

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:36:23 +0100, Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> a écrit:

> On Wednesday, March 9, 2011 1:58:47 AM UTC-7, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
>
>> Three things:
>>
>> 1. Knowledge. Most companies do not even know that Ada exists
>> (really!).
>    I agree most folks think it is dead or dying.
At least its concepts may not be so much dying. I currently reading an  
overview of the design principle of the old ECMAScript 4 project (a typed  
JavaScript for short), and it appears to use the same kind of  
orthogonality as Ada do (not overloading the class concept). It does not  
use class for hiding, it use… packages and namespaces!

Quoted from “Proposed ECMAScript 4th Edition – Language Overview” [2007]:

    Privacy.

    Modularity, name hiding, and library construction are supported
    by packages and namespaces, which control access to names and—together
    with the type system—provide for robust APIs between separately
    implemented modules.

When I read this, I straight away though, “there is a taste of Ada here” :)

You see, the philosophy not entirely dying in the end.

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)]

Le Sat, 26 Mar 2011 13:00:06 +0100, Georg Bauhaus  
<rm-host.bauhaus@maps.futureapps.de> a écrit:
> Speaking of professionals, which professionals find MI familiar?
Just to talk about Multiple Inheritance, interfaces, seems famous enough  
to me (yes, I know this is not really MI, but this is often explained in  
the terms of MI).

-- 
Si les chats miaulent et font autant de vocalises bizarres, c’est pas pour  
les chiens.
“ c++; /* this makes c bigger but returns the old value */ ” [Anonymous]

Re: What's stopping you from using Ada for your next commercial project?

[Jacob Sparre Andersen]

KK6GM <mjsilva@scriptoriumdesigns.com> writes:
 
> I'm definitely going to take a look, especially since it is a bare-
> board port, and moving to other ARM7 parts should presumably be rather
> simple.  I'm a little intimidated at the thought of trying to build
> the GNAT tools - never tried that before.  But the benefits would be
> great.

If your development platform is Linux or Windows, you should be able to
download a compiler.  No need to build it yourself.

I have experimented with Ada on an Arduino device.  I don't think the
run-time for the Arduino gives you tasking, but it worked quite well for
my experiments, and I expect to use Arduinos for commercial projects in
the near future.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
Beware of people with Gnus, they may Hurd you.