No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

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1.No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> OK, I see, you would enjoy experimental software dealing with your
> bank account,

You seem to think that this is not already the case?

> controlling the nuclear reactor 30 miles away

The nuclear industry has been destroyed exactly by this approach of
certifying safety.

2.Comparative military mythology (was: No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language))

Alexandre E. Kopilovitch wrote:
> Robert I. Eachus wrote:
>>Do you know of any other country 
>>where the man touted as the most brilliant General (Napolean) is more 
>>famous for his losses than his victories.  (Waterloo and the retreat 
>>from Moscow.)
> 
> But if you still need "another country" - try to look at Sweden (I heard not
> once that most revered Swedish king is exactly that who lost war with Russia
> and brought Sweden many losses, including important territorial losses).

That would be Karl XII. It's true that he is one of our most famous 
warrior kings, maybe the most famous. I don't know if he's more famous 
for his losses than his victories. He's probably most famous for his death.

For some inexplicable reason he is almost worshipped by xenophobics, but 
other than that I wouldn't exactly call him revered. It seems to me that 
most Swedes don't rever anyone as a warrior. It was different in the 
past. Statues were raised, our history was glorified in literature and 
poetry, and our national anthem speaks about grandeur and glory in 
ancient times, but we seem to have left that behind. We may compare 
ourselves to the vikings or talk about "the language of glory and 
heroes", but that's in a joking manner. Maybe 190 years of peace does 
that to a people.

-- 
Bjn Persson

jor ers @sv ge.
b n_p son eri nu

3.No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

chris wrote:

>Vinzent 'Gadget' Hoefler wrote:
>> chris wrote:
>> 
>>>Assuming it is true that an Ada programmer is 10 times more productive 
>>>than a Java programmer, it can only be so assuming *equivalent* tools 
>>>are available to do the job at hand and equivalent programming skill (no 
>>>point in a comparison otherwise).
>> 
>> The tool is the language.
>
>No, it's a tool not the tool.

Well in my domain it's still the main tool.

>Containers, ... all as part of the platform not the language.  If the 
>task at hand involves developing something like an image manipulation 
>program Java has tools available to make the job easier, like Java 2D.

I am actually doing some sort of image manipulation. :) But it
happens, that all the big Java Libraries aren't useful for this kind
of application.
 
>It might be comforting to some people that for simple Text IO 
>applications, the Ada programmer finishes in 1/10th the time than the 
>Java one but I might be writing applications for a set of servers on 
>different platforms,

That shouldn't be too hard with Ada. It's indeed very portable,
especially when it comes to multi-tasking or even distributed systems.

>need to parse XML from clients, contact 2 different 
>DBMS from different vendors and stream media to clients as well as 
>interfacing to an accounts system so that's irrelevant to me since it 
>doesn't hold for this application and Ada.

Yes. That's certainly true, if you have a big library and you can use
it, it can speed up your development. OTOH it could well be, that all
the time you just saved you will spend with debugging or even
searching for the appropriate library functions... ;)

Don't get me wrong, I'd really like to the Ada Standard Container
Library in the next standard, but anything more than that... 

In fact, you can boil it all down to the famous saying: "Use the right
tool for the job." - If you're putting a GUI together, hell, yes,
stick with Java, Python or whatever. Use LabView if it's appropriate.
Even use C if the job you have to do isn't worth the effort to do it
right the first time. :->

But - and that's just a note for my (and probably other ones)
boss(es), so please don't take it personally, Chris - get used to the
fact that even the so really cool and hyped Java is *not* the right
tool for a _lot_ of jobs. Especially when it comes to the things where
Ada is really good at: real time and embedded applications and systems
with a long life (read: maintenance) time. When it comes to those I'd
say development in Ada outperforms anything I've seen yet.

Sure, it's not too easy to click a crappy GUI together if you want to
do this in Ada, but that sort of development doesn't get a rocket to
fly to the moon, does it?


Vinzent.

4.The inner workings of Gnat (was: No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language))

Martin Dowie wrote:

> GNAT does NOT translate Ada source into C as an
> intermediate.

Has it always been this way? I know some people think that early 
versions of Gnat translated Ada to C, and that it was later integrated 
with GCC so that the C step was removed. Is that false?

-- 
Bjn Persson

jor ers @sv ge.
b n_p son eri nu

5.No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

"Robert I. Eachus" < XXXX@XXXXX.COM > writes:

[snip]

> In fact in French, it is hard to think of French military history as 
> other than glorious.

You might be attaching more "baggage" to the language than is really 
necessary here.

6. No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

7. No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

8. No call for Ada (was Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)