Re: Writing an Operating System in Ada

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

On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:50:56 -0800 (PST), Maciej Sobczak wrote:

> On 14 Sty, 11:28, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
> 
>>> But I do not see how the OO approach would solve that problem. Plug
>>> the OO-aware drive from the OO-aware system from Microsoft into your
>>> OO-aware system of choice and you will be in the same mess.
>>
>> Sure. But your argument was that a file system would handle it better. It
>> does not.
> 
> The file system handles the data exchange between systems that were
> written with different paradigms in mind.
> Your objects would be transportable only between OO systems. That
> would be a huge portability limitation for me.

You can always serialize object. Call it a blob.

The problem is what do you do with the blob beyond undoubtedly enjoyable
moving it for one memory stick to another.

Because your file system has completely nothing to do with the contents,
there is neither any gain nor any loss.

> In this context, the advantage of the file system is that it does not
> impose any assumptions about the OS itself.

How so? It requires the file system to be implemented on each OS you wanted
to attach the device to.

> That's why my USB stick
> works everywhere.

No. It does not under MS-DOS. Did you try to write a movie file on a stick?
(FAT has limitations on the file size).

>> What is the opposite paradigm? I don't care much about OO, I do about ADT.
>> The real alternatives are typed vs untyped. I think we have been using the
>> latter for too long and it won't stand up safety and quality requirements
>> of future omnipresent computing.
> 
> I'm afraid that the omnipresent computing will bring us omnipresent
> untypedness - or at least this is the current trend, if popularity of
> programming languages is to be taken as any indication...

Is there an increase in the number of commercial projects done in those
languages?

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