how to make Ada more popular?

how to make Ada more popular?

[bill_1]

lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.

What can be done to improve the situation?

A very busy area these days is software development in the internet:
Web servers and Application servers. These type of applications
are very large and complex and muli-tasking as a general rule, although
some web servers do not use tasks (threads) yet (such as Apache for example).

It seems to me, this is an area Ada could well proof itself outside the
military.

Apache is written in C. and is very good and popular webServer, and is free
offcourse.  Application servers are even more complex, and need to work
closely with a webserver as a rule.

Now, if a web server can be written in Ada, and GPL'ed and become famouse
for quality, speed, etc.., this is one way to make Ada more known, as many
pepole and ISP's, will download it, with source, and install it, use it, etc..

We hear allot about how great Ada is, and it it is. But there is little
GPL'ed applications in Ada that is large and known. other than GNAT, what
else is there?

Open source Ada applications is one way to make Ada more popular. But if you 
look at all the applications being written for Linux/Unix nowadays, they
are all being written in C and C++. Having something as a web server written
in Ada, would help improve this.

offcourse some would say, why even bother write a webserver when there
are many free ones out there (all written in C or C++, and even Java as
in the case of NetDynamics).

I think the reason will be to help make Ada more popular in the commerical
sector, that would be the main reason.

silly idea? what do you think? 

Bill.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tom Moran]

>Now, if a web server can be written in Ada, and GPL'ed and become famouse
>for quality, speed, etc.., this is one way to make Ada more known, as many
>pepole and ISP's, will download it, with source, and install it, use it, etc..
As Robert Leif says "the way to make Ada popular is to make Ada
programmers visibly rich".  Perhaps if you can write a web server in
Ada that is so obviously an improvement on any existing web server
that everyone wants it, that would also be good advertising.  But if
it was so much better that people would even pay a bunch, *that* would
really be convincing.  IMHO

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[dennison]

In article <36a78291.328470@news.pacbell.net>,
  tmoran@bix.com (Tom Moran) wrote:
> >Now, if a web server can be written in Ada, and GPL'ed and become famouse
> >for quality, speed, etc.., this is one way to make Ada more known, as many
> >pepole and ISP's, will download it, with source, and install it, use it,
etc..
> As Robert Leif says "the way to make Ada popular is to make Ada
> programmers visibly rich".  Perhaps if you can write a web server in
> Ada that is so obviously an improvement on any existing web server
> that everyone wants it, that would also be good advertising.  But if
> it was so much better that people would even pay a bunch, *that* would
> really be convincing.  IMHO
>

I don't think a web server is a good example. Outdoing Apache is a tall order,
and Apache is free. Even if you did manage to make a feature or two better,
they'd have Apache fixed to mimic it within a week.

I think you'd need to pick a niche that isn't being well filled right now. An
open-sourced installshield type application springs readily to mind. An
open-source proxy server w/ demand dialer for hooking home LAN's to the
internet is another good possibility. That's a balooning market, and it'd be
a good way to showcase Ada's speed.

T.E.D.

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

dennison@telepath.com wrote :
>I don't think a web server is a good example. Outdoing Apache is a tall order,
>and Apache is free. Even if you did manage to make a feature or two better,
>they'd have Apache fixed to mimic it within a week.


I don't think so. Programming in C and Ada is so different that Ada apps should
be able to handle certain problems which C programs tend to have e.g. stack
overflow, etc. Ada should be able to do very well in string processing
intensive tasks unless apache has an optimized string library. [ strXXX()
routines tend to visit all character positions in order to do their work. That
is not good for performance.].

>I think you'd need to pick a niche that isn't being well filled right now. An
>open-sourced installshield type application springs readily to mind. An
>open-source proxy server w/ demand dialer for hooking home LAN's to the
>internet is another good possibility. That's a balooning market, and it'd be
>a good way to showcase Ada's speed.


That sounds nice.

A good DNS server is also needed. Especially one that is not as terminally
stupid as the versions of bind I have seen appears to be.

Greetings,

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tom Moran]

>I think you'd need to pick a niche that isn't being well filled right now.
   What we need is new, improved things written in Ada - not just old
ones rewritten and made GPL. 
  Nothing wrong with redoing old things carefully, or making things
GPL, but neither is going to be noticed by a really large number of
people.  So I'd put the talents and skill to work on new things with a
bigger visibility.   
   For every person admiring the improved robustness of the Ada
rewritten version of something, there will be 10 who instead see "slow
to code and late to market".  Given the relative numbers of Ada and C
programmers, there's going to be a lot more GPLed stuff in C than Ada
for the foreseeable future, so Ada is unlikely to become the leading
GPL language.   
  There are a lot of software managers who need to see that an app
written in Ada can be first to market, and there are a lot of
customers who would latch onto "Ada inside" if it truly indicated
greater robustness than the typical C app. 

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[bill_1]

 
another easy way to make Ada more popular, is to have the gnat rpm
package be part of packages that are installed on linux system
when one installs the OS first time.

right now, when I install a Linux system first time, (and offcourse
select the packages to install), onces the system is up, if I want
to compile a C program, all I have to do is type gcc.

with ada, it is little more work, since ada is not installed as part
of the system installation.  

(it is only recently that gnat distribution in form of RPM's made
available, this is very good thing. Now we need to write to 
red hat, caldera, suse, debian etc.. and ask them to have gnat rpm 
as part of the languages that gets installed when Linux is installed).

Bill.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Kees Serier]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <78f734$eup@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>another easy way to make Ada more popular, is to have the gnat rpm
>package be part of packages that are installed on linux system
>when one installs the OS first time.
>
>right now, when I install a Linux system first time, (and offcourse
>select the packages to install), onces the system is up, if I want
>to compile a C program, all I have to do is type gcc.
>
>with ada, it is little more work, since ada is not installed as part
>of the system installation.
>
>(it is only recently that gnat distribution in form of RPM's made
>available, this is very good thing. Now we need to write to
>red hat, caldera, suse, debian etc.. and ask them to have gnat rpm
                                         ^^^^^^^
Debian has GNAT with there distribution for quite some time !!!

>as part of the languages that gets installed when Linux is installed).
>
>Bill.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Fraser Wilson]

I nearly cried when bill_1@nospam.com said:

>We hear a lot about how great Ada is, and it it is. But there are little
>GPL'ed applications in Ada that are large and known. other than GNAT, what
>else is there?

There's certainly not the wealth of GPL'd apps in Ada that there
are in C.  But they do exist -- check out the Ada GTK bindings which
you can get to via the GTK home page at www.gtk.org (I can't remember
offhand the actual address).  OK, it's not actually an app, but the
difference in writing GTK applications using the Ada bindings is, well,
astounding.  It feels like the toolkit was written in Ada from scratch
(which I haven't found in other X Windows bindings).

It's a recurring dream of mine to write and release free Ada software.
There's several projects in the pipeline, but for some reason my real
job keeps taking up my time.

Fraser.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Fraser" == Fraser Wilson <fraser@synopsys.com> writes:

Fraser> There's certainly not the wealth of GPL'd apps in Ada that
Fraser> there are in C.  But they do exist -- check out the Ada GTK
Fraser> bindings which you can get to via the GTK home page at
Fraser> www.gtk.org (I can't remember offhand the actual address).

http://ada.eu.org/gtkada/

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tucker Taft]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote:

: lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.

Well, this depends on the domain you are talking about.
If you said commercial safety critical systems (commercial
aviation, nuclear power, high-speed rail transport, etc.), you would
probably be wrong.  If you said commercial business systems,
I would certainly agree.

: What can be done to improve the situation?

: A very busy area these days is software development in the internet:
: Web servers and Application servers. 
: ... 

: silly idea? what do you think? 

Building a web server or an application server in Ada seems like
a very reasonable thing to do.   Building components in Ada that run
on top of one of the existing application servers also makes
sense.

Note that the ORBExpress/Ada CORBA ORB from Objective 
Information Systems (www.ois.com) is written in Ada 95, 
and performs many of the most critical functions of
an application server.  I am quite sure OIS is not going the
open source route, but feel free to organize and get such
an effort going that way yourself.  Using one of the Ada95-to-Java
compilers would make a lot of sense for part of this effort as well.

: Bill.

--
-Tucker Taft   stt@averstar.com   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
Technical Director, Distributed IT Solutions  (www.averstar.com/tools)
AverStar (formerly Intermetrics, Inc.)   Burlington, MA  USA

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Hans N. Beck]

Hello,:

> bill_1@nospam.com wrote:
>
> : lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
> Well, this depends on the domain you are talking about.
> If you said commercial safety critical systems (commercial
> aviation, nuclear power, high-speed rail transport, etc.), you would
> probably be wrong.  If you said commercial business systems,
> I would certainly agree.
>
> : What can be done to improve the situation?
>
> : A very busy area these days is software development in the internet:
> : Web servers and Application servers.
> : ...
>
> : silly idea? what do you think?
>
> Building a web server or an application server in Ada seems like
> a very reasonable thing to do.   Building components in Ada that run
> on top of one of the existing application servers also makes
> sense.
>
> Note that the ORBExpress/Ada CORBA ORB from Objective
> Information Systems (www.ois.com) is written in Ada 95,
> and performs many of the most critical functions of
> an application server.  I am quite sure OIS is not going the
> open source route, but feel free to organize and get such
> an effort going that way yourself.  Using one of the Ada95-to-Java
> compilers would make a lot of sense for part of this effort as well.
>
> : Bill.
>

 If I talk to other about writing GPL' ed software in Ada, the eyes grow
bigger and bigger. To my experience, the old story about Ada (complicated,

complicated, oversized, complicated, by the way, what is it ?) you can
find
in many peoples mind. There must be examples of open source software
projects,
where the code i.e. the problem and its solution vote for Ada itself. If
that can be
done by rewriting solutions which exist anyway like web servers ? I would
prefer,
that some of the  new elements  for the toolset  GNU/LINUX be written in
Ada
before they exist in C. Example: I'm think about an OODBMS system,
realized
like a library as guile, to plug via CORBA in GNOME or KDE environement.
somethink like this. The story about the complicated oversized non-modern
because
leightweight object design Ada must be killed by (new) examples ;-)

Greetings

Hans

--
            Dipl.-Ing. Hans N. Beck
 --------------------------------------------
  Technischer + didaktischer Computereinsatz
 --------------------------------------------
        Waldstr. 28, D-75045 Walzbachtal

        \   Tel: +49 (0)7203 922280   /
         \  Fax: +49 (0)7203 922281  /
          \ Handy:    0177 5383233  /

           eMail: hnbeck@t-online.de

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Al Christians]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Now, if a web server can be written in Ada, and GPL'ed and become famouse
> for quality, speed, etc.., this is one way to make Ada more known, as many
> pepole and ISP's, will download it, with source, and install it, use it, etc..
> 

Bill,

OK, I'll brainstorm with you, but don't expect a downpour. 

See _The_Innovator's_Dilemma_ by Christensen: a new product has to be
worse in some way than its established competitors to succeed.  How can 
we make a web server worse than the ones we already have?  How about
having it receive requests and serve up data by email?  Terrible,
right?  
Not always, for example:

1. How about guys like me who don't want to buy a server and our ISP's
charge too much for disk at their place?  Suppose we want to offer
services that the ISP won't support.  By email, running in background on
our desktop would be fine.  ISP email provides a queue for requests when 
I'm off-line.  But, like many others, I've got a separate POTS line for
my computer, so that's maybe not too often.  

2. Cable-modem and ADSL:  this is the real growth possibility. ADSL is 
the approximately 1 megabit/second service to be available to just about 
everyone in the next few years.  In some parts of the country it costs 
no more  than a regular phone line, maybe 2 or 3 times as much in
others.   
It's coming, eventually, and it requires a dedicated line (to an ISP for 
all us work-at-home people).  You get an IP address, but the ISP won't 
let you run a server at the home end of the ADSL connection if you are 
just paying for internet access.  How they prohibit this is probably not 
all worked out, but maybe they change the IP address on you sometimes 
when you least expect it, etc.  Some kind of an install-it-at-home
server 
that provides features of a server from home over an ADSL, cable modem,
or even ordinary dial-up account in a way that ISP's will not prevent/
disallow would be a lot of fun. It would have to be easy to set up and 
high-reliability to succeed in that environment.

Some other internet-related software-related business ideas possibly 
worth hopping on:

1. Look at www.webridge.com.  This is customized user-specific internet 
content management aimed at companies over $100 million, all using MS 
tools. Can Ada help beat that on reliability, which they advertise as 
an important feature?  Can Ada reduce costs to develop something for
companies under $100 million (using Linux, etc)?

2.  Look at www.zope.org.  This is python-based web application 
platform, open source.  Find some places where Ada can add value to
this package.  (Python is great, honest -- it's just not strongly-typed 
and runs slower than anything else, so there must be some places in
there where another language like Ada might help out).

Al

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[bill_1]

In article <36A79415.8416E743@easystreet.com>, Al says...
>
 
>
>2. Cable-modem and ADSL:  this is the real growth possibility. ADSL is 
>the approximately 1 megabit/second service to be available to just about 
>everyone in the next few years.  In some parts of the country it costs 
>no more  than a regular phone line, maybe 2 or 3 times as much in
>others.

check 

http://www.pacbell.com/products/business/fastrak/dsl/index.html

I just ordered ADSL today! It is allready here. Pacific Bell,
only $39/month!  and for additioal $10/month, you can also receive ISP
unlimmited connection service. the only initial cost is $199 for the modem
and card etc.. no more additial costs such as installation etc.. this is
only if you sign up for one year term. otherwise you would have to pay
additional cost for installation.

ADSL is allready avaliable in many places and for this low price here in 
California.

As you said, it is full time connection to the internet! you can also
use your reqular phone line at the same time!  your home becomes permanantly
connected to the network with a static IP address (at least this is
what I understand how it will work). 
 
I am sure this will spring up some ideas such as you mention of 
how to take advantage of this for software development from home. 
we are entering a very exciting times for internet related activities, 
where many homes will be connected to the internet 24/day, 365 days/year! 
using a very large speed lines, and this is an opportunitiy for Ada to 
enter this new field. 

Bill.
 

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[E. Robert Tisdale]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote:

> lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
> What can be done to improve the situation?

The answer is simple:

1. Write a portable translator from C and C++ to Ada.
Of course, the translator should be written in Ada
and the translator source code should be published.
The translation needs to be good enough
so that the resulting Ada code is maintainable
and the original C or C++ code
can be safely discarded.

2. Write popular operating systems
such as UNIX and Win32 in Ada
and publish the Ada source code
so that amateur programmers
can participate in system maintenance.


3. Write an Ada interpreter or p-code compiler
so that Ada applets can be safely distributed
on the world wide web.

Good Luck, Bob Tisdale <edwin@netwood.net>

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tom Moran]

>1. Write a portable translator from C and C++ to Ada.
>...
>The translation needs to be good enough
>so that the resulting Ada code is maintainable
  My experience is that a human translation from C to Ada always
uncovers significant bugs in the original C.  These would not likely
be noticed by a machine translation.

>3. Write an Ada interpreter or p-code compiler
>so that Ada applets can be safely distributed
>on the world wide web.
  Different in what way from the existing Intermetrics/Aonix/Gnat
ones?

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Samuel Tardieu]

>>>>> "Bob" == E Robert Tisdale <edwin@netwood.net> writes:

Bob> 1. Write a portable translator from C and C++ to Ada.
Bob> Of course, the translator should be written in Ada and the
Bob> translator source code should be published.

Why write it in Ada? Once you have it in C, just make it go through
itself to generate the Ada source and publish this one :-)

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@ada.eu.org

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[micro_ada]

In article <36A793AB.7A000E82@netwood.net>,
  "E. Robert Tisdale" <edwin@netwood.net> wrote:
> bill_1@nospam.com wrote:
>
> > lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
> >
> > What can be done to improve the situation?
>
> The answer is simple:
[snip]
>
> 3. Write an Ada interpreter or p-code compiler
> so that Ada applets can be safely distributed
> on the world wide web.

Borland allowed third-party Pascal vendors to make money by providing
a distribution mechanism which kept the source code a secret.  Borland
called the mechanism compiled "units" or binary compatible units.
Compatibility was determined by comparing version stamps.  Third-party
vendors could then securely sell units and interfaces to their units.

The equivalent for Ada would be the abstract syntax tree (AST) for the
compilation units of a library package.  Theoretically, ASIS (Ada
Semantic Interface Specification) could be used by third-party vendors
to distribute compatible tools that analyze or manipulate an AST.

But a flexible means must be provided to protect the distribution of
Ada source code and AST's.  Consider the Java archive (JAR) mechanism
for distributing j-code files which can be interpreted on-the-fly by
web browsers.  J-code level is somewhere between Ada source code and
an AST.

So then two situations must be addressed: an Ada distribution archive
(ADA), and a compatible lexeme format to represent Ada source code
(i.e. lexical units as bytecodes followed by a counted length string).
An ADA contains a directory of the files stored inside it.  The files
are either source code (.ads, .adb, .adc), lexeme files (.lxs, .lxb,
.lxc), Ada distribution trees (.adt), or compiled subunits (.sub)
depending upon the intended user.

The .ad* files signify "Ada distribution" of specification, body, and
configuration pragmas.  I'll post information about ADA format later
at the Ada community http://www.dejanews.com/~ada

Two main reasons a third-party vendor would want a standardized lexeme
format is to market tools that can interpret source code during design
phase editing or during synthesis phase code generation of a
restricted subset.  A client can benefit from the lexeme format
because they can use the tools and resources offered by third-party
vendors of Ada software.  And the possibility exists for some clients
to benefit from an interpretable Ada Distribution Tree coupled with
compiled subunits.

Overview,
1. Analysis phase:  Translate scanner output into lexeme format.
2. Design phase:    Examine and manipulate lexeme files.
3. Synthesis phase: Interpret lexeme files.  Output into AST or ADT.
4. Test phase.
5. Maintenance phase.

The specification of token bytecodes is arbitrary but must become
universal if compatibility is to be maintained.  Therefore the values
of the token bytecodes are defined as follows:

package acode is
--  Author: John Howard
--    Date: January 23, 1999
--    http://www.dejanews.com/~ada
--
--  All the information required to access unencrypted lexeme files
--  during the design phase or synthesis phase.
--
--  The lexeme format is token bytecode followed by pascal counted
--  string.  A pascal counted string is a count byte followed by zero
--  or more characters.  A wide_character uses two characters.
--  Most of the lexemes have a zero count byte and no string.
--  (Byte is 8 bits wide)
--
---------------------------------
-- Name                  Value --
------------------------ --------
token_Literal_Null      :=  0;  -- null access
token_Literal_Integer   :=  1;  -- Counted string representation
token_Literal_Real      :=  2;  -- Counted string representation
token_Literal_String    :=  3;  -- Counted string representation
token_Literal_Character :=  4;  -- Counted string representation
token_Operator_Symbol   :=  5;  -- "+" "-" "*" "/" "**" "rem" "mod"
                                -- "and" "or" "xor" "not" "&" "="
                                -- "/=" "<" ">" "<=" ">="
token_Identifier        :=  6;  -- Counted string representation
token_Comment           :=  7;  -- "--" to be ignored.
token_EOF               :=  8;  -- End of file for compilation unit.

-- Single delimiters
token_ampersand         :=  9;  -- '&'
token_tick              := 10;  -- '''
token_paren_left        := 11;  -- '('
token_paren_right       := 12;  -- ')'
token_multiply          := 13;  -- '*'
token_plus              := 14;  -- '+'
token_comma             := 15;  -- ','
token_minus             := 16;  -- '-'
token_dot               := 17;  -- '.'
token_divide            := 18;  -- '/'
token_colon             := 19;  -- ':'
token_semicolon         := 20;  -- ';'
token_less              := 21;  -- '<'
token_equal             := 22;  -- '='
token_greater           := 23;  -- '>'
token_vertical_line     := 24;  -- '|'

-- Compound delimiters
token_arrow             := 25;  -- "=>"
token_double_dot        := 26;  -- ".."
token_double_star       := 27;  -- "**"
token_becomes           := 28;  -- ":="
token_not_equal         := 29;  -- "/="
token_greater_equal     := 30;  -- ">="
token_less_equal        := 31;  -- "<="
token_label_left        := 32;  -- "<<"
token_label_right       := 33;  -- ">>"
token_box               := 34;  -- "<>"

-- Ada95 reserved keywords in alphabetical order from 35..103
token_abort             := 35;
token_abs               := 36;
token_abstract          := 37;
token_accept            := 38;
token_access            := 39;
token_aliased           := 40;
token_all               := 41;
token_and               := 42;
token_array             := 43;
token_at                := 44;
token_begin             := 45;
token_body              := 46;
token_case              := 47;
token_constant          := 48;
token_declare           := 49;
token_delay             := 50;
token_delta             := 51;
token_digits            := 52;
token_do                := 53;
token_else              := 54;
token_elsif             := 55;
token_end               := 56;
token_entry             := 57;
token_exception         := 58;
token_exit              := 59;
token_for               := 60;
token_function          := 61;
token_generic           := 62;
token_goto              := 63;
token_if                := 64;
token_in                := 65;
token_is                := 66;
token_limited           := 67;
token_loop              := 68;
token_mod               := 69;
token_new               := 70;
token_not               := 71;
token_null              := 72;
token_of                := 73;
token_or                := 74;
token_others            := 75;
token_out               := 76;
token_package           := 77;
token_pragma            := 78;
token_private           := 79;
token_procedure         := 80;
token_protected         := 81;
token_raise             := 82;
token_range             := 83;
token_record            := 84;
token_rem               := 85;
token_renames           := 86;
token_requeue           := 87;
token_return            := 88;
token_reverse           := 89;
token_select            := 90;
token_separate          := 91;
token_subtype           := 92;
token_tagged            := 93;
token_task              := 94;
token_terminate         := 95;
token_then              := 96;
token_type              := 97;
token_until             := 98;
token_use               := 99;
token_when              :=100;
token_while             :=101;
token_with              :=102;
token_xor               :=103;

-- Reserved codes for private format counted strings
token_version_info      :=104;  -- compilation unit version info
token_compilation_info  :=105;  -- compilation unit info
token_vendor_info       :=106;  -- vendor information

--  Reserved codes 107 to 127 for future Ada standards.
--  Reserved codes 128 to 255 for interpreting Ada Distribution Trees.
end acode;

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Al Christians]

micro_ada@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> 
> 
> Borland allowed third-party Pascal vendors to make money by providing
> a distribution mechanism which kept the source code a secret.  Borland
> called the mechanism compiled "units" or binary compatible units.
> Compatibility was determined by comparing version stamps.  Third-party
> vendors could then securely sell units and interfaces to their units.
> 

This didn't work very well, because Borland changed the version
about annually, obsoleting all the old units.  Version 4.0 of 
Turbo Pascal (late 1987) introduced units.  Many vendors sold units
for version 4.  Version 5.0 (early 1989) broke all the old units and
customers discovered that they couldn't rebuild an executable with it 
until all their vendors had supplied upgraded units.  Some vendors were
gone and few did this free.  When version 5.5 appeared within about
six months, before the dust had settled on the previous problems,
the practice of selling units was just about dead.  Full source code
distribution (with various restrictive license terms) became just about 
universal.  

Al

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Steve Doiel]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <787hk5$q6t@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
>What can be done to improve the situation?


First: I am an Ada advocate (please don't misinterpret my comments)

How about a dose of reality in development tools!

What Ada needs to become more popular is a resonably priced PC based
Ada development system that includes all the tools needed to do development
in Ada and all of the included tools work.

I have yet to see an Ada development system for PC's running Windows or
Windows NT where the debugger just plain works.  I have used GNAT and
ObjectAda.  Both of these systems have shown tremendous improvement
in the last year and a half (although I haven't seen 3.11p yet) but still I
cannot reliably look at every variable.  This is something that is taken for
granted in most other PC development environments.

Does an Ada development system for Windows NT exist that lets me do
all of my development in Ada?  When I have to read samples of C/C++ code
in order to make Windows API calls, and spend a considerable amount of
time fiddling with using the "bindings", I don't feel like I'm programming
in
Ada.  It is these times that I think about how life would be easier if I
were
programming in C/C++.  When I try to convince someone that Ada is a
good choice, this is a problem area.  We need an up to date binding that
gives the user the impression Ada is natural with the Windows API.

As the tools mature I think there will be a natural increase in use of Ada.
It
is a better language for development.  But if you've done any serious
development on NT in Ada and haven't experieced some pains with the
enviroment either with debugging or bindings, your in the minority.

SteveD

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tom Moran]

>When I have to read samples of C/C++ code
>in order to make Windows API calls, and spend a considerable amount of
>time fiddling with using the "bindings", I don't feel like I'm programming
>in
>Ada. 
  That's why we made CLAW.  See "CLAW, a High Level, Portable, Ada 95
Binding for Microsoft Windows" TriAda 1997, at www.rrsoftware.com

Lack of Ada Windows books (was: how to make Ada more popular?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <36a938da.0@news.pacifier.com>, "Steve Doiel" <nospam_steved@pacifier.com> writes:

> Does an Ada development system for Windows NT exist that lets me do
> all of my development in Ada?  When I have to read samples of C/C++ code
> in order to make Windows API calls, and spend a considerable amount of
> time fiddling with using the "bindings", I don't feel like I'm programming
> in
> Ada.  It is these times that I think about how life would be easier if I
> were
> programming in C/C++.  When I try to convince someone that Ada is a
> good choice, this is a problem area.  We need an up to date binding that
> gives the user the impression Ada is natural with the Windows API.

Some of the bindings issues are due to the system calls being
Microsoft intellectual property, but I believe a major piece
lacking is complete books on how to program against Windows NT
in Ada.  There are _many_ competing offerings in C/C++ terms,
and _many_ in Delphi terms, but none for Ada.  The typical
answer from Ada vendors seems to be "everybody knows C --
read a C book and translate in your head.  This is _not_enough_.

Of course you don't have to be a compiler vendor to write a
great book in this area.  Perhaps there are one or more being
written as we quibble.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Kees Serier]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <787hk5$q6t@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
>What can be done to improve the situation?
>
>A very busy area these days is software development in the internet:
>Web servers and Application servers. These type of applications
>are very large and complex and muli-tasking as a general rule, although
>some web servers do not use tasks (threads) yet (such as Apache for
example).


What else is popular?
Programming Windows (mainly MS-Windows) I think.

What is used for this task?
C++, Delphi, Virtual Basic


What do they have that GNAT does not have?
Class libraries and tools for making programming Windows easy.
There are some commercial Ada compilers that also have these tools, and also
provide those
for use with GNAT, but those are not free and will therefor not lead to the
wanted popularity
(allthough they probably will be of high quality).

So in my opinion, a well designed and documented object oriented gui
library, not too big and
easy to learn, free and with source, would increase Ada's popularity.
If this gui library would also be designed with portability in mind, so that
the same source can
be compiled on different platforms (MS-W, UNIX with X, Mac, OS/2 etc).

An example of such a library for C++ is "V" (see www.objectcentral.com)
which also is available for the MINGW port of gcc/egcc.

Kees Serier

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[dennison]

In article <789kei$mbd$1@news.Kijfhoek.NL.net>,
  "Kees Serier" <K.Serier@cadans.nl> wrote:

> An example of such a library for C++ is "V" (see www.objectcentral.com)
> which also is available for the MINGW port of gcc/egcc.

Last I heard, V was being targetted towards students rather than serious
users. That was quite a while ago, though.

T.E.D.

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[news.oxy.com]

Kees Serier wrote in message <789kei$mbd$1@news.Kijfhoek.NL.net>...
>
>bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <787hk5$q6t@drn.newsguy.com>...

>
>What else is popular?
>Programming Windows (mainly MS-Windows) I think.
>
>What is used for this task?
>C++, Delphi, Virtual Basic

>What do they have that GNAT does not have?
>Class libraries and tools for making programming Windows easy.


I was always trying to point this out almost in my every message to this
forum and I will do this more and more that  if there will be some kind of
the RAD (Rapid Application Development) close to Delphi in functionality
based on Ada 95 this will be a revolution in Ada community that can
significantly improve Ada positions outside the military area: ( commercial
world  - corporate IS departments, companies that are making software for
that market as well as other public domains ).

But so far there was no comments regarding this from  Averstar, ACT, Aonix
an other Ada Companies. I think everyone wants to hear from them what they
are thinking about this.


>There are some commercial Ada compilers that also have these tools, and
also
>provide those
>for use with GNAT, but those are not free and will therefor not lead to the
>wanted popularity
>(allthough they probably will be of high quality).


CLAW from RR Software (which is $495) is example of this.
It is right step in right direction but it is not available individuals and
right now it is still only high OO library (so called Win32 thick bindings)
for GUI  and GUI builder that is built to generate Ada GUI application using
this OO. So it can not be called RAD now. Maybe some time later.
I have ordered it for myself (as a corporate user) but a lot of other people
just can not do this.
Aonix OA also has GUI builder but again it can not be called RAD tool.


No doubt that there is a great need for public "Ada Delphi". As Delphi is a
registered trademark some new bright catchy name for the marketing should
be invented.

Borland Delphi is one of the best examples of the right approach to the
needs of people in the Windows programming area.

MS-Windows NT is now dominant desktop operating system on the enterprise
level (other people may think the other way - let's no discuss this further
at this forum) so everyone who will ignore that fact can lose the game.
There are a lot of people who do not like Microsoft for many different
reasons and trying to ignore that phenomena but not to do thing for Windows
NT as a result of such dislike is just unwise.

Programming under Windows is not just popular (I mean that it should not be
considered as some kind of hobby and thus to be ignored). It is a
corporate/enterprise IS market demand.  I  state  this as a corporate MIS
department staff member.  When such demands are taken into account by
software Companies we have success stories such as Borland Delphi (Borland
even recenly change it's name to Inprise to stress that  their products are
aimed at the enterprise market).


Regards to all,

Vladimir Olensky
(vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com)
(Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
Telecommunication specialist,
Occidental C.I.S. Service, Inc. ( www.oxy.com )
Moscow,
Russia.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Jerry van Dijk]

news.oxy.com (Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com) wrote:

: I was always trying to point this out almost in my every message to this
: forum and I will do this more and more that  if there will be some kind of
: the RAD (Rapid Application Development) close to Delphi in functionality
: based on Ada 95 this will be a revolution in Ada community that can
: significantly improve Ada positions outside the military area: ( commercial
: world  - corporate IS departments, companies that are making software for
: that market as well as other public domains ).

I agree with the sentiment. Wasn't, BTW, AdaSage an attempt in this direction ?

Anyway, unless my memory decieves me, someone recently said that the Ada
market was something like 100 mil. dollar. That really is the problem.
To put that figure into perspective, I work for one of the smaller Dutch
software companies, however our annual turnover is a reasonable amount higher
than that.

So if this figure is true, we are lucky to have the compilers and tools we
have right now, but it is unlikely that anyone can justify the investment
needed to produce a solid IS offering.

--
-- Jerry van Dijk | Leiden, Holland
-- Team Ada       | jdijk@acm.org
-- see http://stad.dsl.nl/~jvandyk

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Richard D Riehle]

In article <F64qz9.9p@jvdsys.stuyts.nl>,
	jerry@jvdsys.stuyts.nl (Jerry van Dijk) wrote:

>I agree with the sentiment. Wasn't, BTW, AdaSage an attempt in this
direction ?

 Yes, AdaSage had some excellent people behind it early on. Good 
 programmers, and good promotion.  As far as I know, there is no
 Ada 95 or Windows 95/98/NT version of AdaSage available commercially.

 A couple of years ago AdaSage was at the Tri-Ada conference in St.
 Louis.  They seem to have disappeared.  The company that took over 
 the commercialization of AdaSage has apparently dropped the ball. 
 Not surprising.  I met with the person who claimed to be in charge
 and realized that he had no clue about how to do commercial software
 products.  

 Maybe there is still an AdaSage effort.  It probably should be built
 on top of CLAW for its user interface and preserve the good database
 engine that made it so powerful for business applications.  It also 
 needs someone in charge who has even the faintest idea of how to be
 successful in the commercial world of software.  Not likely to happen,
 but stranger things have happened.

 Richard Riehle
 richard@adaworks.com
 http://www.adaworks.com

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[kna]

 
One way to make it easier to develop applications in GNAT would be
to bundle with the distrubtion as many bindings as possible.

The main problem I see now with using Ada/Gnat for real world commerical
application is lack of bindings to external systems.  

Looking at adahome binding page, shows me some links to bindings which some
of them seem old (one even was last updated 3 years ago, and still talks
about NT 3.5 as the current windows NT system!) , some are supported on 
limited platforms only, and require too much work to install, configure, 
build on the current platform, and one gets the feeling they are 
downloading something they have no idea in what state it is in and 
who is supporting it and if there is something more recent than it
somewhere else.

compare this situation with Java for example, where one can go to one
site (Sun javasoft) and download the JDK, which is big and contains many
packages needed to do almost anything. or go to IBM alphaworks(?) site
and download tons of Java packages for free.

In C/C++ offcourse, one needs no such bindings becuase the most of the
world out there seem to be writen in C, and so interfacing to it from C/C++
applications is no issue and the C/C++ libraries and header files come with 
the OS as a default.

I read somewhere that some folks are planning to package into an RPM package
GNAT with GLADE and some other packages that does not now come with
GNAT proper now.  This is great news, and this is the sort of thing needed
more to help Ada become more used. 

The main bindings I see needed to be packaged are: binding to Unix system
services (so one can do system programming in Ada), TPC/IP binding, 
Motif, ODBC, Win32 binding, GLADE, etc..

without such packages readily avaliable in one self contained system, that
one can depend on being there and updated with each release, Ada will remain
a nice well defined langauge, and nice compilers, but very little used in 
real world commerical applications.

Kna

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tom Moran]

>Looking at adahome binding page, shows me some links to bindings...
>(complaints about old, unsupported, etc.)
It also has info and links about new, supported, bindings to popular
platforms.  As somebody pointed out, there are fewer Ada people in
world, and certainly less Ada development funding, than some
mass-market programming languages, so don't expect Ada to have as wide
a supporting tools base.  Given that we've got rifles, not howitzers,
where do you think Ada development tool effort should be targeted? 

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[bill_1]

In article <78hoiq$q5b$1@remarQ.com>, "news.oxy.com" says...
>
 
>
>MS-Windows NT is now dominant desktop operating system on the enterprise
>level (other people may think the other way - let's no discuss this further
>at this forum) so everyone who will ignore that fact can lose the game.

sorry, I can't help but comment on this.

MS windows is popular on the desktop today, but in few short years this can
not be the case. last year Linux server market grew %212. more than NT. and
if the desktop does the same in few years, the whole picture will change.

Oracle, informix, sybase are moving to Linux support.
KDE, GNOME are making great progress.
many commerical applications that existed only on windows can be now
found on the free Unix platform. 

so, targeting the GNU/Linux platform for development of GNAT applications
can be as important if one want to look ahead to the future. so, one will
not lose as you conclude by ignoring the MS market.

I've developed on both Unix and Windows. and I'd rather develop on
top of a SOLID platform. NT is a falky platform and a pain to develop on.
I have no idea how any one can enjoy developing on such a system.

>There are a lot of people who do not like Microsoft for many different
>reasons and trying to ignore that phenomena but not to do thing for Windows
>NT as a result of such dislike is just unwise.
>

developers dislike MS because the windows platform is too flaky and not 
solid. Asking a developer to ignore their dislike of the platform and
still develop on it will not work. 

>Programming under Windows is not just popular (I mean that it should not be
>considered as some kind of hobby and thus to be ignored). It is a
>corporate/enterprise IS market demand. 

MacDoland and burgerKing are popular. 
as a programmer, I want a quality platform to develop on. many programmers
I know would rather quit work than having to use Windows bloated tools
and shaky environment. 


> I  state  this as a corporate MIS
>department staff member. 

why not consider the Unix platform for your devlopment? it is higher quality,
richer devolpment tools, higher performance less cost. There is nothing
that forces you to use VB or VC++.

Bill.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Nick Roberts]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <78i33v$e95@drn.newsguy.com>...
[...]
|so, targeting the GNU/Linux platform for development of GNAT applications
|can be as important if one want to look ahead to the future. so, one will
|not lose as you conclude by ignoring the MS market.
[...]

Ignore the Microsoft market? Blimey!

Well, I would suggest that we could (a) target Linux (and maybe other
similar XWS+POSIX platforms?) to start off with, maybe shake it out a
little, and then (b) port to MS (and others) after. Since (a) is going to
take a little time anyway, we will be in a better position to see what's
happening to MS once (a) is achieved.

Quick idea for a name (for Ada take on Delphi): "Velocela".

-------------------------------------------
Nick Roberts
-------------------------------------------

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[David Botton]

It is being done, are you ready to contribute?

David Botton


Kees Serier <K.Serier@cadans.nl> wrote in article 
> 
> So in my opinion, a well designed and documented object oriented gui
> library, not too big and
> easy to learn, free and with source, would increase Ada's popularity.
> If this gui library would also be designed with portability in mind, so
that
> the same source can
> be compiled on different platforms (MS-W, UNIX with X, Mac, OS/2 etc).

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen]

bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <787hk5$q6t@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
>What can be done to improve the situation?
> [snipped]
>
>Now, if a web server can be written in Ada, and GPL'ed and become famouse
>for quality, speed, etc.., this is one way to make Ada more known, as many
>pepole and ISP's, will download it, with source, and install it, use it, etc..


That is a good idea. An other one would be a router written in ada. There is a
ton of other useful things that could be written in Ada.

E.g. a portable terminal handling library (termcap/curses replacement).
Something that knows that <csi> and <esc>[ is supposed to be equivalent would
be useful.

An interface to dbase or excel files would be an incentive to use Ada. A
general database library interface would be useful.

A interface to serial ports would be useful in many environments.

>We hear allot about how great Ada is, and it it is. But there is little
>GPL'ed applications in Ada that is large and known. other than GNAT, what
>else is there?
>
>Open source Ada applications is one way to make Ada more popular. But if you
>look at all the applications being written for Linux/Unix nowadays, they
>are all being written in C and C++. Having something as a web server written
>in Ada, would help improve this.


A managed Ada source repository which contain only the new and useful stuff
would also be nice.

The problem with ada is that almost everybody are fully occupied with work.
There is no time to write that fancy free software.

Greetings,

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Aidan Skinner]

On 21 Jan 1999 07:37:41 -0800, bill_1@nospam.com <bill_1@nospam.com> wrote:

>What can be done to improve the situation?

I think the main problem is a lack of information, and a lack of
easy-to-use high level librarys for things like reg-exps.

>We hear allot about how great Ada is, and it it is. But there is little
>GPL'ed applications in Ada that is large and known. other than GNAT, what
>else is there?

I'm working (when I have the time) on Anubis, which is intended to be used
for news group moderation. I've also got a set of librarys in development
with data structures, encryption and tcp/ip objects/procedures in them.
neither is complete and both are suffering from a lack of free time.

>I think the reason will be to help make Ada more popular in the commerical
>sector, that would be the main reason.

A better thing would be an http front end with a well defined back end
that you could plug your app into. basically a cgi wrap-esque thing.

- Aidan
-- 
You know it's time to stop playing Quake2 when KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL
KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL
http://www.skinner.demon.co.uk/aidan/
http://www.gla.ac.uk/Clubs/WebSoc/~9704075s/

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[dewar]

In article <slrn7afpn5.7t.aidan@skinner.demon.co.uk>,
  aidan@skinner.demon.co.uk (Aidan Skinner) wrote:
> On 21 Jan 1999 07:37:41 -0800, bill_1@nospam.com
<bill_1@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> >What can be done to improve the situation?
>
> I think the main problem is a lack of information, and a
> lack of easy-to-use high level librarys for things like
> reg-exps.

I realize this is just an example, but in fact GNAT
contains the package GNAT.Regexp that provides exactly
this functionality.

We are generally adding components to the GNAT.xxx library
as we go on. If anyone has some nice contributions for this
library, they would be welcome. In fact I think Marcus Kuhn
will be actively collecting such contributions once 3.11p
is out (which as mentioned earlier will be this coming
week).

(we finally have NT 3.11p ready to go :-)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Markus Kuhn]

One way of making Ada more popular might look a bit strange
at first, but is much cheaper than sexy TV adverts:

Just rename Ada into something else.

Every kid in the computing world seems to know that "Ada is
the much too complex 1970s DoD language that nobody uses". We
know that this is not true, but marketing experts will tell you
that this is completely irrelevant. The name Ada has unfortunately
a not too exciting reputation associated with it.

I have noticed that people are not impressed if I tell them
that I program my PhD project in Ada95. I have therefore started
to tell them: "I program my PhD project in GNAT, a cool new,
efficient, and secure OO programing language for which there
is a high-quality GNU development kit available on the Internet".
Wow. People are now impressed! People want to know more about it!

Pascal is now called Delphi. Well, then Ada is now called GNAT.

The fact that the GNAT programming environment also happens to
pass the Ada95 validation suite is just one of its long list
of features, and not one that is of too much concern to anybody.
Only if people ask, I tell them that GNAT is based on Ada95 and
POSIX.5 with many cool library extensions such as a regular
expression library and more. Nobody gets excited these days
just about an "ISO/IEC 8652 conforming" stamp on some software.

I suggest to ACT to generate loads of press releases when
GNAT 3.11p is available, not a single of which should contain
any reference to Ada. Then see what happens ... ;-)

Markus

-- 
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Al Christians]

Markus Kuhn wrote:
> 
> 
> I suggest to ACT to generate loads of press releases when
> GNAT 3.11p is available, not a single of which should contain
> any reference to Ada. Then see what happens ... ;-)
> 

Critical Mass tried that with Reactor, a package  implementing Modula-3.
Did it work for them?

Al

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[dennison]

In article <78gfid$pra$2@pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
  mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) wrote:
> I suggest to ACT to generate loads of press releases when
> GNAT 3.11p is available, not a single of which should contain
> any reference to Ada. Then see what happens ... ;-)

This reminds me of the recent trend in cigarette bilboard advertisements,
where no cigarette is depicted in the ad. It seems that actually showing the
product would completely destroy the healthy, vital image they want to
project...

That's when you know its time to punt.

T.E.D.

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Aidan Skinner]

On Sun, 24 Jan 1999 21:01:33 GMT, dewar@gnat.com <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:

>In article <slrn7afpn5.7t.aidan@skinner.demon.co.uk>,
>  aidan@skinner.demon.co.uk (Aidan Skinner) wrote:

>> lack of easy-to-use high level librarys for things like
>> reg-exps.
>
>I realize this is just an example, but in fact GNAT
>contains the package GNAT.Regexp that provides exactly
>this functionality.

Bugger. I hate it when that happens. :( ;)

- Aidan
-- 
You know it's time to stop playing Quake2 when KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL
KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL KILL
http://www.skinner.demon.co.uk/aidan/
http://www.gla.ac.uk/Clubs/WebSoc/~9704075s/

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Bob Munck]

On 21 Jan 1999 07:37:41 -0800, bill_1@nospam.com wrote:

>
>lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
>What can be done to improve the situation?

Web server, development environment, GUI library, etc,
etc.  -- all technical solutions.

THIS IS NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM!!

I think most of the people reading this newsgroup will agree
that Ada is technically superior to all the fad languages --
C++, Java -- for the great majority of their uses and the great
majority of the institutions using them.  That fact has made it
somewhat successful, but much less so than those other
languages.  Further demonstration of that kind of superiority
will have limited value.

I believe that what we need is to have one or more new or
existing companies use Ada to develop a large, widely-
used package that is significantly better engineered and
less buggy than others of its type.  The company would also
maintain and enhance the package through massive
changes in its own features and its underlying platform.
Finally, it would have to do both development and enhancement
quickly and at low cost.

Is this possible?  I don't know.  The commercial software
culture seems to give us products that are "quick and dirty"
throughout their entire lifecycle.  They're thrown together
quickly, developed and enhanced with "death march"
projects, pushed through brute force testing, debugged by
beta releases that are practically indistinguishable from
general releases, and die a painful death when they
become too kludgy to live.

Companies make money with products like this only because
there is a huge rate of growth in the number of new users
of computers in general.  They raise the money to create
upgrades for their existing users by selling full packages to
new users; in effect, it's a ponzi scheme.

Bob Munck
Mill Creek Systems LC

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Nick Roberts]

Bob Munck wrote
[...]
|I think most of the people reading this newsgroup will agree
|that Ada is technically superior to all the fad languages
[...]
|The commercial software
|culture seems to give us products that are "quick and dirty"
|throughout their entire lifecycle
[...]
|in effect, it's a ponzi scheme.


Hear hear!

Nick

Making ADA More Popular

[Michael Garrett]

Take an inexpensive processor which has a gnu / cygnus compiler port and its
evaluation board
and provide gnat with a runtime environment (RTEMS ADA?) for a decent price,
around 200.00 US.

This would provide an ADA  real-time programming environment that students
could access and actually design, and code on. ( I am not a student, and
would be first in line! )

One such board is the hitachi SH1 evaluation kit. For 99.00 it includes a
decent amount of peripherals, and the cygnus toolchain. I'm not sure if
RTEMS is ported to the SH1.

A power PC eval board is probably available also.

In many companies, it is these evaluation kits which gain the loyalty of
energetic and inspired individuals. This loyalty gets parts designed in. It
could also get languages designed in.

I can guarantee that in a years time, Java will be available in this format.
ADA should be there too.

If Aonix is listening, how about an evaluation Raven kit for a processor
Eval Board? I understand the financial pain of reading this, but the more
ADA users there are, we all win.














bill_1@nospam.com wrote in message <787hk5$q6t@drn.newsguy.com>...
>
>lets face it. Ada is not used much in commerical sector.
>
>What can be done to improve the situation?

Re: Making ADA More Popular

[Marin David Condic]

Michael Garrett wrote:
> 
> Take an inexpensive processor which has a gnu / cygnus compiler port and its
> evaluation board
> and provide gnat with a runtime environment (RTEMS ADA?) for a decent price,
> around 200.00 US.
<snip>

I have often said that an Ada compiler manufacturer could do well by
getting into bed with some SBC manufacturer and putting out a whole kit.
If you had a relatively inexpensive SBC with a couple of A/D's, F/D's
and a bunch of discretes which was large enough to be used for
reasonably sophisticated applications, and you could get a PC based
programming environment which gave you an Ada compiler & the tools you
need to get code onto the board, you'd really have something there. With
something like GNAT, there's a natural advantage in having the built-in
C compiler because most of the folks working on boards like this are
already doing it in C and this would be a way for them to ease into Ada
in a non-threatening way. The pitch would be this: You program the board
in Ada and all of the support tools, libraries, runtime, etc is very Ada
oriented. O.K. if you *really must* proigram it in C, the compiler will
do that, but you'll find the tasking, libraries, etc, to be more
"natural" in Ada so maybe you want to learn that rather than spit into
the wind...

MDC
-- 
Marin David Condic
Real Time & Embedded Systems, Propulsion Systems Analysis
United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney, Large Military Engines
M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600, West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600
Ph: 561.796.8997         Fx: 561.796.4669
***To reply, remove "bogon" from the domain name.***

    "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."

        --  Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
            Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

Re: Making ADA More Popular

[joel]

In article <OuXOQsbS#GA.281@nih2naac.prod2.compuserve.com>,
  "Michael Garrett" <michaelgarrett@csi.com> wrote:
>
> Take an inexpensive processor which has a gnu / cygnus compiler port and its
> evaluation board
> and provide gnat with a runtime environment (RTEMS ADA?) for a decent price,
> around 200.00 US.
>
> This would provide an ADA  real-time programming environment that students
> could access and actually design, and code on. ( I am not a student, and
> would be first in line! )
>
> One such board is the hitachi SH1 evaluation kit. For 99.00 it includes a
> decent amount of peripherals, and the cygnus toolchain. I'm not sure if
> RTEMS is ported to the SH1.

RTEMS has been ported to the SH1.  This port is new in 4.0.

> A power PC eval board is probably available also.

A number of these exist.  I recall that IBM has some for the 4xx series.
I would expect that there are ones available for the Motorola 8xx series.

Don't forget that Motorola also has Coldfire eval boards that would likely
be suitable as a student target.

And remember that a PC can be treated as an embedded target.  You can
go so far as cross develop on a UNIX box and debug on it remotely.
This would likely be a good option for many university labs.

> In many companies, it is these evaluation kits which gain the loyalty of
> energetic and inspired individuals. This loyalty gets parts designed in. It
> could also get languages designed in.
>
> I can guarantee that in a years time, Java will be available in this format.
> ADA should be there too.
>
> If Aonix is listening, how about an evaluation Raven kit for a processor
> Eval Board? I understand the financial pain of reading this, but the more
> ADA users there are, we all win.

If someone is interested in sponsoring the development of such a kit using
GNAT/RTEMS, feel free to contact Mark Johannes (mark@OARcorp.com).  We would
certainly like to see this option available to educators.

--joel
Joel Sherrill                    Director of Research & Development
joel@OARcorp.com                 On-Line Applications Research
Ask me about RTEMS: a free RTOS  Huntsville AL 35805
   Support Available             (205) 722-9985

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Re: Making ADA More Popular

[Michael Garrett]

>Take an inexpensive processor which has a gnu / cygnus compiler port and
its
> evaluation board  and provide gnat with a runtime environment (RTEMS ADA?)
for a decent price,

(Notice I left the price off)

OK. Now that I said it, I may do it.

Thanks to Joel at OAR for coming to the plate.

The advent of high integration processors such as the Coldfire parts and the
Hitachi parts means that an entire system can
be built with very few components. I think this is the environment to
concentrate on due to the fact that MANY embedded systems are built this way
and in the past, I think alot of developers, unfamiliar with ADA beleive
that ADA is just too big for this environment.
( or too expensive ? )

I have built Defibrillators and Pacemakers out of evaluation boards that
have formed the basis of products. It is no longer economical to wire wrap
up a prototype board. The eval board becomes the product. I believe this
will be the trend of semiconductor manufacturers in the future. Hitachi
provides the GNU cygnus toolchain ( 99.00 SH1 eval kit ), TI allows you to
do an evaluation of their C2X, C5X etc by providing a very rich environment
with a limited time C compiler Debugger etc. I don;t want to say that the
tools are becoming a commodity, but this sells PARTS.

Enough Rambling...

Michael C. Garrett
Vice President of Research and Development
Medical Research Laboratories
www.mrlinc.com

Re: Making ADA More Popular

[dewar]

In article <OuXOQsbS#GA.281@nih2naac.prod2.compuserve.com>,
  "Michael Garrett" <michaelgarrett@csi.com> wrote:
>
> In many companies, it is these evaluation kits which gain
> the loyalty of energetic and inspired individuals. This
> loyalty gets parts designed in. It could also get
> languages designed in.

Please note that the RTEMS and GNAT technology is available
in public versions and many students and "energetic and
inspired" individuals have taken the public sources of
GNAT and RTEMS and built cross systems of various kinds
for experimentation.

For serious evaluation of GNAT cross-technology, please
contact our sales department at sales@gnat.com, we are
happy to arrange for evaluation contracts for this
technology which is now available in a variety of
forms (VxWorks, RTEMS, Bare/No-Runtime) on a number
of targets (Sparc, 68K, Alpha, MIPS, PPC).

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Donald Duck]

I think that people doesn't change to ADA if they see working ADA apps.
I think what they really need are ADA headlines in the magazines. They
must find ADA headlines always when they open a magazin. That was the
way with pascal (see the magazines from the 80th) and later with C (at
the end of the 80th the magazin headlines switched to "C over Pascal").
So the best thing to promote ADA would be to write ADA articles for the
most popular magazines (regardless of the content). 
I think people are not interested in quality but in popularity. See for
example the OS/2 story. In my opinion OS/2 was better than windows (at
least Win 3.1). But - who knows OS/2 ??? So the people bought Windows.
And they have wait a couple of years for Win95 although OS/2 already
existed.
Same with cars. If one has to decide between Daimler-Chrysler or
Humiondic, I think he would decide for the first one - simply because
the name (not the technic) is better known.

Regards,
Alfred

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Andrzej Lewandowski]

Donald Duck wrote:
> 
> I think that people doesn't change to ADA if they see working ADA apps.
> I think what they really need are ADA headlines in the magazines. They
> must find ADA headlines always when they open a magazin. 


People will not switch to Ada unless the following (necessary but not
sufficient) happens:

1. There will be Ada IDE similar to Delphi or VB front-end (actually, 
ObjectAda is pretty close),

2. There will be a GUI builder that will make it possible to use
3-rd party ActiveX controls,

3. There will be easy to use infrastructure for building ActiveX 
controls and COM objects (as easy as Delphi or VB),

4. There will be easy to use interface to databases (such as MS ADO),

5. Environment will be available in 3 versions: standard for $100,
professional for $250 and enterprise for $2000, and their respective
features will match features of similar Delphi or VB versions,

6. Nicely designed boxes with standard and professional versions will
be available in CompUSA and CircuitCity, as well as will be
mentioned on Programmer's Paradise, Programmers's Shop and 
Egghead's web pages,

7. Ada products will be advertised in every issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal,
C++
Report, Java Report, etc.,

8. Headhunters and recruiters will learn what is Ada and will have a
nice pool
of experienced and not very expensive (say, not more expensive than
Smalltalk)
developers,

9. Companies manufacturing Ada compilers and tools will make it clear
and
convincing that they are in good financial health, will stay in business 
for next 5 years and will continue providing support for their products.

If not, Ada will stay where it is now.

A.L.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[news.oxy.com]

This is exactly what I was telling almost in each my post to this forum.

But some people (from which Ada future much depends on) are telling that
there is nothing new in that ideas and doing nothing regarding this issue.

To be very good language itself is not enough to put through its way in the
programming industry.

This is only platform for creating building blocks and tools that can be
used by many other programmers.

Probably this idea should be felt as something more sensible by many more
people to start materializing itself into something solid.

Regards,
Vladimir Olensky
(vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com)
(Vladimir_Olensky@oxy.com)
Telecommunication specialist,
Occidental C.I.S. Service, Inc. ( www.oxy.com )
Moscow,
Russia.





Andrzej Lewandowski wrote in message <36B864EC.73D8@mchugh.com>...
>Donald Duck wrote:
>>
>> I think that people doesn't change to ADA if they see working ADA apps.
>> I think what they really need are ADA headlines in the magazines. They
>> must find ADA headlines always when they open a magazin.
>
>
>People will not switch to Ada unless the following (necessary but not
>sufficient) happens:
>
>1. There will be Ada IDE similar to Delphi or VB front-end (actually,
>ObjectAda is pretty close),
>
Also CLAW from RR Software.

>2. There will be a GUI builder that will make it possible to use
>3-rd party ActiveX controls,
>
>3. There will be easy to use infrastructure for building ActiveX
>controls and COM objects (as easy as Delphi or VB),
>
>4. There will be easy to use interface to databases (such as MS ADO),
>
>5. Environment will be available in 3 versions: standard for $100,
>professional for $250 and enterprise for $2000, and their respective
>features will match features of similar Delphi or VB versions,
>
>6. Nicely designed boxes with standard and professional versions will
>be available in CompUSA and CircuitCity, as well as will be
>mentioned on Programmer's Paradise, Programmers's Shop and
>Egghead's web pages,
>
>7. Ada products will be advertised in every issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal,
>C++
>Report, Java Report, etc.,
>
>8. Headhunters and recruiters will learn what is Ada and will have a
>nice pool
>of experienced and not very expensive (say, not more expensive than
>Smalltalk)
>developers,
>
>9. Companies manufacturing Ada compilers and tools will make it clear
>and
>convincing that they are in good financial health, will stay in business
>for next 5 years and will continue providing support for their products.
>
>If not, Ada will stay where it is now.
>
>A.L.

Re: how to make Ada more popular?

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <36B85BE9.4CD7@Entenhausen.net>, Donald Duck <Donald.Duck@Entenhausen.net> writes:

> I think people are not interested in quality but in popularity. See for
> example the OS/2 story. In my opinion OS/2 was better than windows (at
> least Win 3.1). But - who knows OS/2 ??? So the people bought Windows.
> And they have wait a couple of years for Win95 although OS/2 already
> existed.

Thus it would seem a matter of simply forcing a licensing deal on
the Wintel hardware manufacturers of the world requiring them to
include an Ada compiler on every machine sold :-)

Larry Kilgallen