Re: Student views on Ada

[rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger)]

CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM wrote:
: In *their* time, they had
: to program machines with plug-in breadboards and jumper-wires.
: (and they were damned glad to have 'em, too! ;-) They could even
: identify programs by how they *sounded* when the relays were
: clicking.

Hmmm... I'm just a spring chicken, but doesn't everyone debug via
sound?  A coupla three years ago, I was optimizing an Ada tasking
runtime for the Hartstone tasking benchmark.  On Motorola 680x0 VME
boards, you could tell the progress of the test, and whether or not
the test had stopped, by the barely discernible frequency emitted
(as a side effect) from some circuitry on the board.  As the Hartstone
test progressed through increasing stress test levels (faster task
switches) the frequency got higher and higher... until deadlines
were finally missed and the test stopped, at which time silence
reined.  The higher the frequency, the better the Hartstone performance.

As a side note, our testing tool, TestMate, has an (optional)
predefined "epilog" routine...  if everything went fine with your
test, your Sparc'll say "PASS", otherwise it gives a more detailed
verbal status, like "fail", "exception", etc.  It is customizable, so
that you can replace any of the audio messages with something more
nastalgic, like clicking relays...  (if that doesn't make you rush out
and buy ten copies, what will?)

	.B.

--
Bob Kitzberger	        +1 (916) 274-3075	        rlk@rational.com
Rational Software Corp., 10565 Brunswick Rd. #11, Grass Valley, CA 95945