From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,d17f9c8d910b90f6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Microsoft & Ada References: From: Brian May Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 22:26:50 +1000 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:/gKXcZh7Ubd1w0wWkz8rSOSQ1Gw= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl-202-173-153-89.vic.westnet.com.au X-Trace: news.melbourne.pipenetworks.com 1094905602 202.173.153.89 (11 Sep 2004 22:26:42 +1000) X-Complaints-To: abuse@pipenetworks.com X-Abuse-Info: Please forward all headers to enable your complaint to be properly processed. Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.alphalink.com.au!news.melbourne.pipenetworks.com!not-for-mail Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3587 Date: 2004-09-11T22:26:50+10:00 List-Id: >>>>> "stephane" == stephane richard writes: stephane> *** Loss of standards, like what they did to C++, Like stephane> Borland did to C++ too...they didn't totally destroy C++ stephane> but in most cases, code written for Visual C++ tend to stephane> not compile as is on other C++ compilers. What if, say Microsoft were to design and implement thick Win32 bindings for functions that are not standardized in Ada? Some examples: Win32 GUI or serial IO. Would this be considered a good thing or bad thing? What if there were able to implement the bindings in such a way that they don't have to supply any source code? What if the bindings can only be used with Microsoft's compiler? (I guess it may still be possible to write an open source library that implements the same package specifications). My personal thought is that code that uses such routines should be isolated, so you can still compile the program without these functions (perhaps using alternate code). That is, if portability is required. In practise, I could imagine code being written that requires the new functions without any thought as to making it portable. I think there are a number of related issues here, so I am curious what peoples thoughts are on the matter. -- Brian May