Re: Make with Ada 2019 : DogRobot

[Jerry Petrey <gpetrey@cox.net>]

On 3/26/19 6:05, Rego, P. wrote:
>> Just taking a quick look at your project documentation, it is a tremendous work completed just in two weeks. Therefore, this project is worth to study in details. Congratulations and thank you for sharing it.
>>
>> Anh Vo
> 
> Now that the winners are chosen (3 weeks late from original date), the first place is a 40 LINES OF CODE project. 1/3 of the project description is totally unrelevant (explaining how light is used in Photography, Astronomy and Architecture), and another big part explaining unrelated facts to the project (how a LDR works??). No sw design, no system architecture??? I don't question the validity of this project, regarding the fact that it is ALMOST NOTHING OF Ada for a "Make with Ada" contest, it is ok in general DIY space. Is the intention of this contest to transform the use of Ada into a junk of "don't know how to make with Ada" like other languages are used in some newborn makerspaces.
> 
> The 3rd winner was implemented mostly in Python according to the project description, and the Ada code is not available (actually no code whatsoever). The 2nd place seems fare.
> 
> Also my own project probably was not good enough to win the contest, no problem at all with this, but please, judges are nuts this year. Mine had a complete architecture and 900 LOC among several artifacts, and I wouldn't think it would win. Not talking about the 3 weeks of delay without any satisfation to the participants, which is unaceptable.
> 
> I am very sorry for this outburst, but I couldn't not keep it quiet. I was naive thinking this contest was serious.  It could be a good opportunity to share the other communities that making software with Ada is to make different and better software. So I am very ashamed of having participated this edition. It was really a waste of time and (very much) personal effort.
> 
> Pablo.
> 


I have to agree with you on this. I don’t know what they are really 
trying to do with this contest but it does not seem to be showing off 
what you can do with Ada. As much as I love Ada, it has been slowing 
dying for many years and AdaCore can only hold on by constantly changing 
it and charging a fortune to a few customers who are locked into it. 
The only hope for it is to get hobbyists and students exposed to it 
early on and that has not been done – it is probably too late now. I 
participated in this contest because I thought it might help that 
effort. I have been developing support for GNAT ARM Ada for a number of 
years for my own use. I have support for more than two dozen ST boards 
and many sensors and other peripherals which I will continue to use for 
my own projects. I worked for a number of major aerospace companies 
using Ada before I retired a few years ago and all of them have either 
moved away from Ada or are trying to. None even wanted to move beyond 
Ada 83. I still love it but the handwriting is on the wall!

Jerry