Re: Computational scientists ignoring and ignored by Ada

[dog.ee.lbl.gov!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!math.ohio-state.edu!darwin.su]

In article <CCnAw5.rt@cerc.wvu.edu>, vanscoy@cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Frances L VanSco
y) writes:
|> 
|> 
|> I am a faculty member in computer science at West Virginia and a big
|> fan of Ada.  (I first taught a unit on Ada in a course in 1980,
|> taught Ada as a first programming language to freshmen in 1987, and
|> was the major advocate for my department's move to teach Ada to all
|> freshmen cs majors starting in fall 1989.)
|> 
|> Currently I am working with physics and engineering researchers
|> at WVU on a computational materials science project.  The university
|> has its own new (less than one year old) parallel computer.
|> I would *love* to develop new software for this project in Ada.
|> However we only have compilers for dialects of Fortran and C.
|> In discussions with many vendors of parallel computers before we
|> purchased ours I was disappointed to learn that Ada compilers for 
|> parallel computers are essentially nonexistant.  In three+ years on
|> this project I have often missed the protection of strong typing and
|> the support for abstraction provided by Ada.
|> 
|> 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.
|> 
|> Frances Van Scoy, Associate Professor of Computer Science
|> Dept. of Statistics and Computer Science, West Virginia University
|> Morgantown, WV  26506-6330      phone 304-293-3607   fax 304-293-2272

As a computational scientist, I agree completely.  But, there is hope.
The new Ada compiler for SGI machines (Verdix, I believe) offers true
support for multiprocessor machines.  Ada is so well suited for it.
Different tasks using different processors.  Oh, the structure is all
built in.

Brad