Re: Ada, the best language with the not-so-best tool chain

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 11:28:56 +0000 (UTC), Simon Clubley wrote:

> On 2012-10-08, Dmitry A. Kazakov <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote:
>> On Sun, 7 Oct 2012 13:21:52 -0700 (PDT), Patrick wrote:
>>
>>> Now I can see where you are coming from but 11 months ago I had no idea
>>> that Ada, the language designed for embedded work, was not able to be
>>> embedded via GCC and was largely confined to the desktop unless the
>>> programmer or his/her company is quite wealthy.
>>
>> Remember that Ada was designed 80's. Embedded changed drastically since
>> then. The "embedded" we do today is unthinkable without Ethernet and TCP/IP
>> stack, tasking support, USB and flash support, high-resolution clock. That
>> means a full-scale OS. To have a compiler for such a target is rather a
>> minor problem. Ada run-time, tons of drivers for the OS, the loader are
>> greater troubles.
> 
> What you describe above is the "big system" embedded type projects.

Yes.

> There are plenty of standalone embedded projects where bare metal
> programming (or a small RTOS) and a 8-bit or low end 32-bit MCU is
> perfectly acceptable and a appropriate choice.
> 
> BTW, do you actually do any embedded work, either professionally or as a
> hobbyist ?

Professionally. We have an embedded middleware project (100% Ada 2005). It
must be "big" because industrial hardware protocols are big (EtherCAT, XCP,
CANOpen etc). Not much chance to stuff that into a bare-bone. Automotive is
moving away from bare bone anyway (e.g. AUTOSAR).

>> Embedded became bigger than one-man hobby project. If that didn't scare
>> you, let you invested 10+ years in a board, which definitely will be out of
>> stock in just 2-5 years to come? What then? It just does not make sense
>> anymore. Sorry.
> 
> How do you know he's doing this professionally instead of as a learning
> exercise ?

In that case I would suggest that making some obscure board working is not
worth learning. There is much more exciting stuff to learn about Ada,
real-time, automation/control, hardware interfacing issues.

>> Why don't you buy a single board x86 PC, which could be under 30 EUR,
>> install Linux on it and spare most of the headache?
>>
> 
> How do you know such a board will meet his power consumption, form factor
> and real time requirements ?

By reading the specifications? Yes, physical constraints do exist. But I
guess they are not much relevant for a hobby/learning project. For anything
serious one would likely change boards many times. Hardware is a very short
living thing. One of the major reasons why we did it in Ada was because we
knew in advance that we would have to port our stuff so frequently. In 5
years there will be other boards available, smaller, faster etc. The
strength of Ada is that you need not choose it now.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de