Re: Computational scientists ignoring and ignored by Ada

[darwin.sura.net!source.asset.com!cernosek@gatech.edu (Gary J. Cernosek)]

In article <CCnAw5.rt@cerc.wvu.edu> vanscoy@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Frances L VanScoy
) writes:
>We who have an appreciation for Ada and software engineering and
>experience in scientific computing need to continue to encourage
>parallel computer vendors and Ada compiler vendors to provide Ada
>compilers for parallel computers.

In an effort to build on the points being made in this thread, 
I wanted to make reference to the latest Communications of the 
ACM (Sept. '93).  The issue's theme is "Concurrent 
Object-Oriented Programming."  After a quick glance through the 
eight articles presented on the subject, I saw little mention 
of Ada.  Now obviously, since Ada is not quite yet in the 
category of an "object-oriented programming language," it might 
make sense to exclude it in this issue.  But with the new OO 
features of Ada 9X on the way, Ada could (and should) become a 
real player in this barely touched market of integrating object 
technology and concurrent programming.

We all know that in spite of its shortcomings in the tasking 
model, Ada does represent 10+ years of experience with 
concurrent programming within a STANDARD programming language.  
I emphasize "standard" here because I see that several of the 
CACM articles are based on unique, non-standard, or otherwise 
disjoint extensions to existing languages.  This is indeed one 
area in which Ada has a discriminator -- that is, in 
integrating concurrent programming constructs directly into 
the standard source code language.

The reason why I wanted to make these points is that I think 
the Ada community should capitalize on both the technical and 
the marketing opportunities associated with this subject.  
Assuming one believes that the future of computing rests in 
parallel processing technologies, and that the object paradigm 
is here to stay (at least for a while), the convergence of the 
two presents a real growth potential for languages such as 
Ada.  I think that with Ada 9X enabling Ada to escape the "...but 
it's not really object-oriented" syndrome, the next technical 
(and marketing) challenges lie in exploring exactly how to 
integrate Ada's new OO features with its old (and new) concurrent
programming mechanisms.

Now, I know that some work has already been done by Colin 
Atkinson and David Weller in this very subject, and will in 
fact appear in this year's Tri-Ada proceedings.  And there does 
indeed appear to be some significant technical issues facing 
the integration effort.  However, with all of the (mostly 
negative) rhetoric that I see in this newsgroup regarding Ada's 
marketability, I thought I'd try to generate some discussion on 
what to do about the future of Ada that doesn't pertain to the 
mandate issue :-).




-- 
Gary J. Cernosek
Fastrak Training Inc.
Houston Office: (713) 280-4768
E-mail: cernosek@source.asset.com