Re: Ada platforms and pricing, was: Re: a new language, designed for safety !

[Natasha Kerensikova <lithiumcat@instinctive.eu>]

On 2014-06-18, Peter Chapin <PChapin@vtc.vsc.edu> wrote:
> I'll mention that I have a pet project to build an Ada compiler that
> targets LLVM (although the precise target is subject to change) here
>
> 	https://github.com/pchapin/augusta
>
> I don't anticipate this going anywhere quickly; it's mostly just
> intended to be a fun hobby project. My implementation language is Scala.

I saw your announcement here and so was aware of your project.

However, when writing a compiler in a language for another language, you
can only rely on people interested in both languages (and maybe a few
from the "host-language" interested in any technical challenge). If
Scala community is on the same order of magnitude as Ada community, that
probably means very few people.

For example, I'm not interested in Scala, the descriptions I saw don't
really interest me in giving it a try, and the JVM target is quite a
strong deterrent for me.

On the other hand, an Ada (partial) compiler written in Ada "scratches
the programmers' hitch" an thus is more likely to gain traction.

I guess the bottom line is that your project and mine have actually very
different aims: you want a fun hobby, I want to help with compiler
diversity.



In a similar but unrelated idea, whenever people describe me as having
a passion for programming or computers, I'm tempted to correct them: I
don't particularly enjoy programming or engineering, I'm only doing
whatever is required to enjoy the results. Hence my choice for Ada and
any software reliability technologies, so I can build tools that can
enjoy without having to constantly go back to developing/debugging
phase.

So there is no fun hobby in my projects, only means to various ends.
(For example my soon-to-be-published Ada bindings to Renderman
Interface is a means to my fun hobby of computer graphics).


Natasha