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-Thread: 103376,21960280f1d61e84 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!uns-out.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!pc03.usenetserver.com!news.flashnewsgroups.com-b7.4zTQh5tI3A!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? References: <1169531612.200010.153120@38g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <20070123211651.c0d43695.tero.koskinen@iki.fi> <87zm89tpk7.fsf@ludovic-brenta.org> <4q4pqgmdwo.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de> From: Stephen Leake Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 11:56:01 -0500 Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1006 (Gnus v5.10.6) Emacs/21.3 (windows-nt) Cancel-Lock: sha1:O5pISzYQPlANdAUhDy69pdcStNs= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: abuse@flashnewsgroups.com Organization: FlashNewsgroups.com X-Trace: 3ea1d45bb842b759e00d405842 Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8623 Date: 2007-01-27T11:56:01-05:00 List-Id: Markus E Leypold writes: > But you can writ Code in C which just does something with > things on the stack, doesn't fiddle with threads or signals and thus > interacts minimally with the host runtime. That's the reason why C is > so popular for libraries: You can. You can do that in Ada as well. It is perhaps not as easy in Ada as in C, because you must be more aware of what language constructs require run-time support. For example, fixed-point types require run-time support. If you use fixed-point types in C, it is obvious from the source code that the run-time must include a fixed-point library, because all fixed-point operations are function calls. In Ada, that's not so clear from the source, because fixed-point operations are just operators. GNAT provides 'pragma No_Run_Time' for this; it makes source code that requires run-time support illegal. I've written code with this pragma turned on (for export to a spacecraft executive that was mostly written in C), and it does make Ada feel more like C. Still far preferable to actually using C, though! In GNAT GPL-2006, 'pragma No_Run_Time' is listed as 'obsolescent'; you are supposed to use a "configurable run-time" instead. I'm not sure how that impacts this issue. -- -- Stephe