Re: Why so hard to come up with a simple embedded Ada system?

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

On Sat, 17 Jul 2010 01:45:24 -0700 (PDT), MRE wrote:

> On 14 Jul., 09:23, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
> wrote:
>> On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:55:45 -0700 (PDT), use...@scriptoriumdesigns.com
>> wrote:
> 
>> The bottom line, if students want to use modern software developing
>> techniques (read Ada), they have to press on lazy ignorant profs. Board
>> package in Ada is a perfect project for a university SW engineering
>> department.
> 
> Being one of the afore-mentioned lazy ignorant profs, I can assure you, that
> most CS departments are for -in many cases even sound- reasons not interested
> in developing BSPs or adapting cross-compilers to a given hardware architecture.
> Embedded Systems is just not sexy enough for them.

Yes

> The guys who like to see Ada cross-compilers are those in the EE departments, who
> need to write software for embedded systems and are appalled by what rubbish you
> can write in C and still come away with it. Personally I have a project up and
> running where three of my students write code in Ada for AVR (8-Bit and 32-Bit).
> You can find decent Ada cross-compilers for both and that's what I use.
> 
> If you ask me however to do a similar thing for say MSP430, sorry I can't. I don't
> have a clue how to generate the cross-compiler for Ada and I don't know how to
> write / adapt the Ravenscar-Runtime. Furthermore I just don't have the time to lern
> it and I lack the ressources to have my students do it.

But you (education) have time, resources and continuity we (mid-sized
industry) cannot even dream of. We have to deliver a solution in 6-12
months to the customer and move into next, likely unrelated, project. A
university can have a long term program, cooperate with other universities
(NYU), bring together interdisciplinary people, last but not least, publish
the results driving attention to (ours are proprietary). IMO it is
universities, not the industry who in the end drive the software technology
(in whatever direction).

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