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-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-23 17:43:34 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!news.ucsd.edu!not-for-mail From: Dr Chaos Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died (was): 64 bit addressing and OOP Followup-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 00:43:33 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Univ of Calif San Diego Message-ID: References: <3E5C7033.BD5DC462@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0302260618.7506cba7@posting.google.com> <3E5CF5C6.84822F57@adaworks.com> <8qkczsAcGcn+Ew83@nildram.co.uk> <3EA04A1E.CAFC1FEF@adaworks.com> <9fa75d42.0304221126.7112b7d5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu X-Trace: news1.ucsd.edu 1051145013 22400 132.239.222.85 (24 Apr 2003 00:43:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news1.ucsd.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 00:43:33 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.object:61731 comp.lang.ada:36449 Date: 2003-04-24T00:43:33+00:00 List-Id: On 23 Apr 2003 16:06:58 -0700, Kent Paul Dolan wrote: > [And by the way, since I've drifted away from Ada for lack of job > prospects for an Ada beginner without a current security clearance, is > there any effort underway to add the syntactic sugar for supercomputer > programming to Ada in an upcoming standard's language revision, It takes more than just syntacic surgar, it takes explicit semantically important assertions and constructions, e.g. Fortran's distinction between FORALL and DO loops. > or is > Ada down to "don't rock the boat" editorial cleanup standards (that > would eventually doom the language) for the foreseeable future, or is > there some big worthwhile effort but in another direction?] I have no particular knowledge, but I think it's doubtful. For massively parallel computation, modern Fortran (i.e. 95 and soon 200x) is where the compiler makers and the users are concentrating. Modern Fortran is not substantially inferior as a language versus Ada in conventional "data structure ability" for such tasks, and there is already substantial experience at parallelization. Fortran 200x is getting more Adaish anyway, and that's the future. Problems worthy of being solved on a large scale on a supercomputer usually come with a long history of legacy code anyway. A global circulation model is not something to be whipped up in a week. Also, extreme embedded-system-quality reliability is less important there than having the immediate researchers who know the subject matter---scientists not full time programmers---running and modifying the code. > xanthian.