Re: Recent Ada Information (was: zhttp://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/r

[David Bolen <db3l@fitlinxx.com>]

Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) writes:

> The last (and only the second) standard for the language is from 1995.
> Almost any project you can imagine doing in Ada has issues more critical
> than needing new features in the language.   The facts don't change,
> so the FAQs don't change.

Note I'm not talking about updated language standards or recent
updates to the language itself - I have no problem with a solid
language standard holding for years (or decades) - but information
related to users of the language and applications of the language.

Given the fluidity of FAQs for some other languages, I'm not sure the
fact that a language definition remains the same means that FAQs are
likely to remain constant (unless the user population is relative
stagnant).  By definition a FAQ is a frequently asked question, so as
user populations of a language grow, the questions tend to evolve with
them.  It's hard not to occasionally crop up a new question or two.

But those were really just examples of cases where I seemed to get a
dated feeling from some of the sites I perused.  As I said I'm not
assuming any specific correlation, just wondering about what I seemed
to notice and if there were other places to be looking.

> As for studies, while some may feel that the model train comparison
> is not up to the detail level of testing a cure for cancer, others
> are of the opinion that for _their_ project having yet another study
> is not really crucial.

No, but just the fact that nobody was updating the page to at least
remove the "NEW" banner made me wonder how much attention was being
paid to keeping things relatively current.

> What _is_ new in recent years is available source samples for various
> projects and utilities.  People in a position to share their code are
> doing so (while others fuss over license scheme battles).

Do you have any useful URLs I could follow?  I'd love to see some
practical examples of current usages for Ada in applications.  I've
got adapower (and followed various links from it and it's probably the
best starting point I've found), adaic and adahome were ok but
somewhat dated, and the latest FAQ from this newsgroup I found was
from 97.  I've grabbed a copy of GNAT.  But any suggestions you may
have would be welcome.

Thanks.

--
-- David
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