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: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-08 10:57:05 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.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc Subject: Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died) Followup-To: comp.lang.java.advocacy Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 17:57:02 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Univ of Calif San Diego Message-ID: References: <9fa75d42.0304230424.10612b1a@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305020516.bdba239@posting.google.com> <82347202.0305021418.4719da45@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305060521.400f1d80@posting.google.com> <82347202.0305061103.2ddd98e4@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305070504.6866e7a3@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305070929.2d7a0d4c@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305080606.70eebec@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lyapunov.ucsd.edu X-Trace: news1.ucsd.edu 1052416622 26877 132.239.222.85 (8 May 2003 17:57:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news1.ucsd.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 17:57:02 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/0.9.7.4 (Linux) Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63324 comp.object:63004 comp.lang.ada:37071 misc.misc:14021 Date: 2003-05-08T17:57:02+00:00 List-Id: On 8 May 2003 07:06:36 -0700, soft-eng wrote: > Dr Chaos wrote in message news:... >> >> If Unix had been written in Ada, then Ada would be wildly popular >> today, and software would be significantly less buggy. > > PC's don't show this. CP/M and MS/DOS etc were written > in assembler, and the field was open for other languages. > At first Basic and Turbo Pascal were the most popular > high-level language on the PC. C compilers started > arriving later, but became popular quickly. > There > were at least three Ada compilers, but the quality > of these may have been questionable, and the > price was definitely high by PC standards. Right. I think at the time of the early-mid 1980's the computational power of a PC was not really sufficient to host a successful Ada compiler, whereas it could do so for a simple C compiler. The PC's were about on par in power with a mid 1970's PDP-11, an early host for Unix and Bell Labs's portable C compiler. 64 to 128k of memory, floppy disks, physical addressing only. VAX-11's had 768k to 1M of memory with much more sophisticated operating systems with virtual memory, typically with hard disk storage as well. I think C is actually was good language for systems programming in the mid 1980's environment. It isn't any more for applications programming and wasn't a suitable base for one. -- --------------------------------------------- Matthew Kennel, mkennel@ucsd.edu Institute For Nonlinear Science, UC San Diego ---------------------------------------------