Re: Current status of Ada?

[Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

On 2007-08-30, Markus E L
<development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de> wrote:

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"> Many companies outside of the United States of America are running  |
|> operating systems which had been created before DOS. At least one of |
|> the banks I am a customer of, for example.                           |
|                                                                       |
|At the desktop?"                                                       |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

No. The bank uses Microsoft Windows at the desktop.

Though this was not reproduced in
news:7y3ay1z5g2.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de
, Colin Paul Gloster had posted in
news:slrnfdd45m.828.Colin_Paul_Gloster@mizar.iet.unipi.it
:
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"[..]                                                                  |
|                                                                       |
|Running two closed source third party programs which were dynamically  |
|linked for different GNU/Linux operating systems can be very difficult |
|if you need to run them in one operating system on one computer. This  |
|problem could easily arise if one program needs to be upgraded.        |
|                                                                       |
|[..]"                                                                  |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Instead Mr. Leypold reproduced:

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"> You seem to be under the misimpression that what you call "LINUX" is|
|> an operating system. Dynamically linked binaries for one GNU/Linux   |
|> distribution are extremely unlikely to work for another GNU/Linux    |
|                                                                       |
|"Extremely unlikely" is wrong, I think,"                               |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Nonetheless, what I claimed is true. You could try
WWW.RRSoftware.com/html/prodinf/tips.html#unixtest
for gratis or you could spend thousands of Euro on a simulation suite
from Cadence to check whether running these programs "on a wide range
of current distributions" will be possible. (In my experience,
libraries from the part of Cadence which used to be Incisive are more
portable than other software from another part of Cadence.)

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|" especially for binaries that                                         |
|have been compiled with the explicit aim to run on multiple Linux      |
|distros."                                                              |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Well obviously.

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|" E.g. Open office and Nozilla have binary packages that run on        |
|a wide range of current distributions."                                |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Open Office and Mozilla are not "two closed source third party
programs" which is something I posted but you edited out. Restricting
to what at one point used to be "current" distributions is not
necessarily something someone wants to do: Intel's 8051 cross
assemblers from nearly twenty years ago which used to be hosted on DOS
still work on Windows XP.

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"[..]                                                                  |
|                                                                       |
|[..] But there is also less necessity for binary                       |
|compatibility in Linux than in the closed source world."               |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Irrelevant for third party closed source software running on GNU/Linux.

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"> With any of GNU/Linux and Microsoft, a company would need to employ |
|> someone who is competent at maintaining an installation, whose salary|
|> would make the price of a Microsoft operating system insignificant.  |
|                                                                       |
|Absolut nonsense. Furthermore people who need a full time employee to  |
|maintain a Linux installation wuite likely need also someone to run    |
|their windows installations."                                          |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

Please have the decency to read what you respond to. I posted "With
[..] Microsoft, a company would need to employ someone who is
competent at maintaining an installation, whose salary would make the
price of a Microsoft operating system insignificant" which you
responded to with "Furthermore people who need a full time employee to
maintain a Linux installation wuite likely need also someone to run
their windows installations" which really did not have a justifiable
reason for the word "Furthermore" as you repeated that someone would
need to be paid to maintain the installations for people who would
find it too difficult. 

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"> At home, the operating system I mainly use is Microsoft DOS version |
|> 5. The money which was paid for it in the 1990s was for a permanent  |
|> license and I do not need to buy new software and hardware for it. It|
|> works better than any of the other operating systems you mentioned in|
|> this thread.                                                         |
|                                                                       |
|What does "work better" mean? Does it have better virtual memory       |
|management? Does ist run picture processing programs like Gimp or      |
|photo shop? Etc ...                                                    |
|                                                                       |
|                                                                       |
|Regards -- Markus"                                                     |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|

No. It does not crash. It does what I need.