Re: Improving Ada's image - Was: 7E7 Flight Controls Electronics

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

>>>>> "Marin" == Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com> writes:

    Marin> I've found Outlook to be bloated, slow, etc. That might
    Marin> make a good candidate. Perhaps with a philosophy of not

I don't think so...

You are comparing an incredibly poorly designed, poorly written,
insecure application written in C (I assume), with presumably a
properly designed and written application in Ada.

To conclude that the second one is better then the first because of
the choice of language is a bit misleading IMHO. In fact, my guess is
a number of the security flaws in Outlook would also occur in Ada.
eg. look at the JavaScript related security issues.

    Marin> trying to build the Swiss Army Knife of e-mail programs:
    Marin> Build the various functions as independent units (capable
    Marin> of working together) so that you don't need to load/run the
    Marin> pieces you don't want or for which you have a substitute
    Marin> (like an address book). That might be a concept that could
    Marin> work well & find some popularity in the user
    Marin> community. Perhaps even making it work in conjunction with
    Marin> OpenOffice might help?

Do you load these units at compile time, start-up time (when
application starts), or on demand (eg. when user selects address
book)?

Loading units at compile time is fast and efficient as far as the user
is concerned, but means recompiling for adding a new unit. The other
options are more flexible as far as the user is concerned, but may
result in slower execution while the units load and initialize, and
may require more overhead to keep track of the different units at
run-time.
-- 
Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>