Re: Ada is popular after all

[Jacob Sparre Andersen <sparre@nbi.dk>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:

My interpretation of the pop-con numbers is not quite as optimistic as
yours, but we are definitely not going backwards compared to other
languages.

> Another thing that makes Ada trendy nowadays is the enduring series
> of articles by Yves Bailly in GNU/Linux Magazine France. The
> December issue contains article #14 in the series, ending with a
> mention of "the next article"...

Sounds good.

I am working on another attempt to improve the popularity of Ada:

I just started teaching the course on POSIX programming at DMU-Syd
(http://www.dmusyd.edu/) for the second time.  This time I am using
Ada.  Last year I tought the same course using C.  It is still too
early to tell if it works out significantly better using Ada.  So far
I can just say that I haven't had any complaints about the choice of
language.

Formally the whole education is based on Java, but I got an excemption
from that rule when I was hired, so I am free to use Ada, Bash and C
as I see fit.

Doing POSIX programming in Ada is not quite as easy as I hoped:

 - There are apparently holes in the POSIX/Ada API compared to the
   POSIX/C API (utmp/wtmp comes to mind).

 - We have no easy alternative to "man 2 <system call>" and "man 3
   <library call>".

 - Some design choices in the POSIX/Ada API seem illogical (error
   handling comes to mind).

 - Some implementation choices in Florist seem rather inefficient
   (access permissions come to mind).

 - Florist is buggy on Ubuntu (procedure Open_Or_Create comes to
   mind).

I make the course materials available at
<http://edb.jacob-sparre.dk/Posix_in_Ada/>.

Comments and corrections are very welcome.

Greetings,

Jacob
-- 
     My brain needs a "back" button so I can
         remember where I left my coffee mug.