Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Robert C. Leif]

I really do not care what anyone wishes to write; however, I believe that it
is a bad practice to hijack a thread. All one has to do is New name was Old
name.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]
On Behalf Of Alexandre E. Kopilovitch
Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2002 6:09 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: New Ada compiler for .NET

Ed Falis <falis@adelphia.net> wrote:

>Hyman Rosen wrote:
>
> > Noam Chomsky is the looniest of the loony left. People of his ilk
> > have absolutely no credibility left in the United States. Current
> > US politics is unabashedly centrist, whether on the left or right.
> > 
>
>How about we talk about programming languages instead of politics?

Well, passages about politics may sometimes indicate a person's
responsibility,
and that may be helpful for estimation of his passages about programming
languages.
Just in the case -- as for credibility for Noam Chomsky in the United
States: 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
SNIP to End

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ingo Marks]

Robert C. Leif wrote:

> I really do not care what anyone wishes to write; however, I believe that
> it is a bad practice to hijack a thread. All one has to do is New name was
> Old name.
> Bob Leif

As you see the hijackers talk about ethics but don't care about it :-)

Regards,
Ingo

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Ingo Marks wrote:
> As you see the hijackers talk about ethics but don't care about it :-)

As you see, the discussion is actually about power and control,
and what happens when someone refuses to follow the rules of
good behavior expected by the community. In an unmoderated group
like this, everyone is victimized by people who are posting
off-topic. The only solution is to use force - make the group
moderated, or appeal to the posters' ISPs.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> Ingo Marks wrote:
> 
>> As you see the hijackers talk about ethics but don't care about it :-)
> 
> 
> As you see, the discussion is actually about power and control,
> and what happens when someone refuses to follow the rules of
> good behavior expected by the community. In an unmoderated group
> like this, everyone is victimized by people who are posting
> off-topic. The only solution is to use force - make the group
> moderated, or appeal to the posters' ISPs.
> 


Isn't America the land of FREEDOM???

I find off-topic entertaining, sometime. Agree not?

-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Adrian Hoe wrote:
> Isn't America the land of FREEDOM???

Sure. And unfettered freedom means a mailbox full of spam.
Or people who come into your house to eat your salami sandwich.
If people are doing unpleasant things to you, and refuse to
stop, then the only answer is the application of force.

> I find off-topic entertaining, sometime. Agree not?

Of course, which is why I'm participating in it :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[I. Marks]

Adrian Hoe wrote:

> Isn't America the land of FREEDOM???

Is CLA American-only?

I thought it's a worldwide forum for ADA specific discussions. There are 
other forums which are much more suitable for discussions about power and 
control.

> I find off-topic entertaining, sometime. Agree not?

You raised the percentage of interested readers from 1% to 2% ;-)

Ingo

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <3e18f3f3_1@news.tm.net.my>, Adrian Hoe <mailbox@*nospam*adrianhoe.com> writes:

> I find off-topic entertaining, sometime. Agree not?

There will be some off-topics of interest to some people, but others
will only be annoyed each time.  The reason Usenet is not one giant
newsgroup is so that people can segregate their interests and join
only the discussions that _they_ are interested in.

Off-topic posts have the effect of destroying that orderly system,
no matter how interesting they may be to _some_ people.

Please take off-topic discussions to alt.politics... or whatever is
appropriate.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

"I. Marks" <nospam_adv@region-nord.de> wrote in message news:<avbhgl$2a4$04$1@news.t-online.com>...
> Adrian Hoe wrote:
> 
> > Isn't America the land of FREEDOM???
> 
> Is CLA American-only?
> 
> I thought it's a worldwide forum for ADA specific discussions. There are 

Nice bite on the troll. I think that of the (5) messages preceding
yours in this rebranded thread, *none* was written by an American. I
believe Adrian is posting from somewhere in Malaysia, and the poster
he was responding to lives in Israel. Before that came you, then
Robert, from what looks to be France. You appear to be from somewhare
in Germany (at least your ISP is).

As a bonnafide (US)American, it always amuses me to see to see
foriegners unwittingly lambaste each other for being America-centric.

If its true, then dammit, ya'll cut it out. That's *my* job. :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> and the poster he was responding to lives in Israel

You mean me? I live in New York City. I'm a genuine American.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> Please take off-topic discussions to alt.politics... or whatever is
> appropriate.

I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
>> and the poster he was responding to lives in Israel
> 
> 
> You mean me? I live in New York City. I'm a genuine American.

Ahhh. That explains my confusion. For some reason I was mixing you up 
with Ehud, I think.


Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my address 
offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
> weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
> peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)
> 

Our lawyers?

Ohhhh, sorry. I thought you said *First* World...

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Ted Dennison wrote:
> Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my address 
> offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.

This won't be necessary, as I am presently *not* on the same continent.
I'm working in Hong Kong this week. :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[James S. Rogers]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:1042001532.101644@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> > Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my address
> > offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.
>
> This won't be necessary, as I am presently *not* on the same continent.
> I'm working in Hong Kong this week. :-)
>
Well, at least you have an choice of noodles in your current location.

Jim Rogers

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Ted Dennison wrote:
> 
>> Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my 
>> address offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.
> 
> 
> This won't be necessary, as I am presently *not* on the same continent.
> I'm working in Hong Kong this week. :-)
> 

(Whew!) :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Richard Riehle]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> Ted Dennison wrote:
> > Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my address
> > offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.
>
> This won't be necessary, as I am presently *not* on the same continent.
> I'm working in Hong Kong this week. :-)

Ah, that great Chinese food.   I was in Wuhan, China for the past two
weeks presenting some seminars at Wuhan University.   For most of
the students, it was the first time they ever saw Ada.   Amazing how
easy it is for people who have never seen Ada before to read and
understand the key points.

ACT alert.  Do expect some downloads of GNAT from Hubei
Province in China.

Richard Riehle

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Richard Riehle]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> > Please take off-topic discussions to alt.politics... or whatever is
> > appropriate.
>
> I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
> weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
> peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)

It is also used in Iran, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, and several other
places one would not ordinarily consider as Western countries.  I
get requests for training from some of these places (not North
Korea or Iraq, however).  We don't do business with Iran either.
It is also used for some very large, and I mean _very_ large
projects in China.   Of course the Chinese have developed their
own Ada compilers and I think they have modified them in some
ways.   One Chinese innovation I saw involved using a construct
similar to a typical C++ class, but without all the associated
C++ garbage code.  I'll try to find an electronic copy of one of
those specifications and post it in this forum.

Richard Riehle

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Richard Riehle wrote:

> Hyman Rosen wrote:
> 
> 
>>Ted Dennison wrote:
>>
>>>Since we are on the same continent, if you want I'll give you my address
>>>offline, so you can personally come slap me with a wet noodle.
>>>
>>This won't be necessary, as I am presently *not* on the same continent.
>>I'm working in Hong Kong this week. :-)
>>
> 
> Ah, that great Chinese food.   I was in Wuhan, China for the past two
> weeks presenting some seminars at Wuhan University.   For most of
> the students, it was the first time they ever saw Ada.   Amazing how
> easy it is for people who have never seen Ada before to read and
> understand the key points.
> 
> ACT alert.  Do expect some downloads of GNAT from Hubei
> Province in China.
> 
> Richard Riehle
> 
> 
> 
> 


Tsinghua University (Beijing) has had some research on Ada some time 
ago. If my memory is not corrupted, so is Inner-Mongolia.

-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

> 
> I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
> weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
> peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)
> 


Hurray! (Give you five.) I agree whole-heartedly. When you are in this 
region, stop by Malaysia and give me a call. I will buy you great 
lunch and dinner. Nasi lemak, roti canai, Roti "John", Chendol, 
Lemang, Satay, Ketupat and whole lot of local cuisine. The foods in 
"3rd world" (Malaysia is a developing nation, ok?) are delicious too. 
(yummy ;-)

Why not the Ada community turn their attention to develop something 
useful for the humanity rather the destruction of the humanity? Say, 
something to help the disabled. Wouldn't this be wonderful?

Could the use of Ada to develop weapon systems the main hatred against 
Ada? I think this should provoke some deep thinking among CLA and I 
definitely is expecting some bashing.... Oh.. oh..
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Richard Riehle wrote:

>  Of course the Chinese have developed their
> own Ada compilers and I think they have modified them in some
> ways.   One Chinese innovation I saw involved using a construct
> similar to a typical C++ class, but without all the associated
> C++ garbage code.  I'll try to find an electronic copy of one of
> those specifications and post it in this forum.
> 
> Richard Riehle


I think it is from Tsing Hua University.
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Richard Riehle wrote:

> 
> It is also used in Iran, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, and several other
> places one would not ordinarily consider as Western countries.  I
> get requests for training from some of these places (not North
> Korea or Iraq, however).  We don't do business with Iran either.


 From my sources, Iran is using Ada extensively. So do Pakistan and 
India (of course).

NK obtains Ada knowledge from SK. SK uses Ada extensively in its 
transportation systems, power plants, some military installations.

Don't bother to ask me my source. It's reliable.
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> "I. Marks" <nospam_adv@region-nord.de> wrote in message news:<avbhgl$2a4$04$1@news.t-online.com>...
> 
>>Adrian Hoe wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Isn't America the land of FREEDOM???
>>>
>>Is CLA American-only?
>>
>>I thought it's a worldwide forum for ADA specific discussions. There are 
>>
> 
> Nice bite on the troll. I think that of the (5) messages preceding
> yours in this rebranded thread, *none* was written by an American. I
> believe Adrian is posting from somewhere in Malaysia, and the poster
> he was responding to lives in Israel. Before that came you, then
> Robert, from what looks to be France. You appear to be from somewhare
> in Germany (at least your ISP is).


Ted, if you ever come to this region, stop by Malaysia and give me a 
call. I will buy you great lunch and dinner. See my reply to Hyman's.

Don't worry. Malaysia is safe.



> As a bonnafide (US)American, it always amuses me to see to see
> foriegners unwittingly lambaste each other for being America-centric.
> 


Great entertainment, isn't it?




-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Hyman Rosen]

Adrian Hoe wrote:
> When you are in this region, stop by Malaysia and give me a call.

I'm flying on my company's dime, so no side trips to other places
this time around. I'm leaving Hong Kong Sunday morning for home.
I met a friend who lives here and he said that Malaysia was a very
nice place, and he was even thinking of going to live there.

Back in engineering school we would occasionally joke about going
to work making bombs after graduation. The issue never really
arose for me since I went into programming, and I've always worked
on stuff that had nothing to do with weapons systems. Not that I
think it would bother me to do so (insert obligatory reference to
Tom Lehrer's song about Werner von Braun :-)

To go back on topic for a minute (what a concept!), another thread
got me wondering just how useful in practice ranged types are.
What situations lead one to declare a type which is limited to a
range of integers? I'm thinking fixed-size arrays, which I usually
consider to be a design error.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Richard Riehle]

Adrian Hoe wrote:

> Could the use of Ada to develop weapon systems the main hatred against
> Ada? I think this should provoke some deep thinking among CLA and I
> definitely is expecting some bashing.... Oh.. oh..

I do recall, from the late late Eighties and early Nineties, that at least

one prominent SF Bay Area company noted for its real-time systems
support, refused to publicly acknowledge any association with Ada
because its founders considered Ada the programming language
for "killing and maiming."    These guys were U.C. Berkeley grads.

That being said, many other dual-use ideas and tools originally
developed under DoD auspices have not suffered that fate, perhaps
because they were never directly advertised as originating with
the DoD.

It can be conjectured that the DoD mandate was, in part responsible
for the resistance to Ada, but not because it was designed for weapon
systems.   Rather,  major compiler vendors (RR Software and Meridian
excluded) treated Ada as a DoD feeding trough and charged such
outrageous licensing fees that few commercial companies could even
consider using it.   Others, such as Tandem Computers, created what
they called "checkbox" compilers, never intending that anyone would
ever use the compiler.  In the case of Tandem, Ada could have been
a strategic advantage, but they never interfaced their compiler with
the rest of their operating system and development environments.

The whole idea of validating a compiler turned out to be incorrectly
conceived.   Validation required nothing more than that the compiler
conform to the standard, but there was little incentive for the compiler
to be integrated into the rest of the tools, resources, and capabilities
of the targeted platform.   Such checkbox compilers became a source
of frustration for programmers, most of whom discovered they needed
to create their own libraries to interface to their expected platform.

Many people recognized this when Ada 95 came along, but that
recognition was too late to reinvigorate Ada's reputation.  Then
the DoD withdrew its support for Ada at the very point in its
development when good tools began to appear.   This was a little
like "grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory."    On the other
hand, if the DoD had continued with the mandate,  the same compiler
publishers would still be seeking to feed at the trough of government
money and continue to charge huge fees for the use of the technology.

There has to be some happy medium between completely free, a la
GNAT, and a reasonably priced compiler that comes complete with
tools, direct support for a given platform, etc., versus the feeding
frenzy inspired by any government mandate, Ada or otherwise.  It
is no accident that so many compiler publishers have abandoned
or de-escalated their support for Ada now that they do not have
a captive customer.

I believe Ada can stand on its own.  The work of ACT, along with
many others has helped to democratize the language.   However,
ACT is not the only game in town and others continue to create
serious compilers for the rigorous demands of real-time, safety-critical
software.  DDC-I and Irvine Compiler Corporation come to mind
as examples of these kinds of responsible commercial companies
who continue to be strong supporters of Ada.  I apologize if I
have overlooked anyone else, but the fact is that none of those
companies does much to promote Ada beyond their traditional
customer base.  Oh, yes, Aonix made an attempt before it
was purchased by an a bunch of ignoramouses who failed to
see the value of their Ada capability until too late.

Richard Riehle

Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

Thanks for getting the thread out of politics and back onto the newsgroup
topic.

I'd agree that Ada's lack of followers isn't really related to some sort of
Left Wing reluctance to touch anything that might be associated with the
military. Its more that there is a general perception that things designed
for the military won't be suitable for commercial use and that corresponding
commercial technology will be cheaper. Look at the Mil-Std-1553 bus. Its a
good, reliable means of blipping bits up and down a wire and many companies
that make avionics for both the military & commercial sector will use the
1553 for the military side of the shop, but never consider it for the
commercial side.

Why? Probably mostly price. 1553 cards are still quite expensive when
compared to something else like an Ethernet card, which is far more complex
in what it has to do. Probably it starts with vendors figuring they can milk
the government cash-cow and thus making little effort to reduce costs.
(Government accounting policies help this along too.) Hence some similar
technology goes to the private sector and competition + volume starts
driving the cost down. Pretty soon, its a self-fulfilling prophecy: Military
equipment costs more than commercial equipment.

Ada certainly messed up on that one too. Especially back in the early days,
the prices were so high that any private citizen who thought he might be
interested in getting involved with Ada would look at the price tag and
immediately be consumed with an urge to deficate. RR Software helped that
picture some, but not before the damage had already been done. There was
also the overall damage done by the poor quality and lack of validation of
the early compilers - leading people to believe that Ada was just another
overpriced, unworkable government boondoggle. Early impressions are really
hard to overcome.

You mention DDC-I and Irvine. Out of curiosity, what sort of price range are
their compilers going for these days and do they target anything
interesting?

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com...
>
> I believe Ada can stand on its own.  The work of ACT, along with
> many others has helped to democratize the language.   However,
> ACT is not the only game in town and others continue to create
> serious compilers for the rigorous demands of real-time, safety-critical
> software.  DDC-I and Irvine Compiler Corporation come to mind
> as examples of these kinds of responsible commercial companies
> who continue to be strong supporters of Ada.  I apologize if I
> have overlooked anyone else, but the fact is that none of those
> companies does much to promote Ada beyond their traditional
> customer base.  Oh, yes, Aonix made an attempt before it
> was purchased by an a bunch of ignoramouses who failed to
> see the value of their Ada capability until too late.

Re: Making bombs after graduation ( was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Christopher Browne]

faust <urfaust@optushome.com.au> wrote:
> I heard him recount this rather ruefully as an example of how we
> practice self delusion.

Probably a little bit of it going both ways...  For him to expect them
to change over and agree with his perspective seems pretty wishful.
-- 
If this was helpful, <http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=cbbrowne> rate me
http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/emacs.html
Your latest program has been judged UNTASTEFUL by the T daemon;
and automatically deleted.

Re: Making bombs after graduation ( was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Fraser Wilson]

faust <urfaust@optushome.com.au> writes:

> True story follows:

Um, whatever.  Why did you feel the need to add an extra four groups?
Was this not off-topic enough in c.l.a?  Are you not getting enough
action with only the one group?  Well, soc.culture.australian is
usually pretty reliable for a flamewar, don't know about the others.

Fraser.

Re: Ranged Types (was: Hijacking a Thread)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <1042177570.752923@master.nyc.kbcfp.com>, Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> writes:

> To go back on topic for a minute (what a concept!), another thread
> got me wondering just how useful in practice ranged types are.
> What situations lead one to declare a type which is limited to a
> range of integers? I'm thinking fixed-size arrays, which I usually
> consider to be a design error.

Fixed size arrays are not a error in many situations, such as
tracking the N highest instances of a particular event. Of
course overflowing the index type would also be detected as
overflowing the array.

In declaring such an array, I typically base the array limits
on the 'first and 'last attributes of the type so that a later
change to make that 150 entries need only be made in one place.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[P S Norby]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:1041910244.361888@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
> Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> > Please take off-topic discussions to alt.politics... or whatever is
> > appropriate.
>
> I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
> weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
> peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)
>

"If the scientists in the free countries will not make weapons to defend the
freedom of their countries, freedom would be lost"
  - Predident F. D. Roosevelt

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> You mention DDC-I and Irvine. Out of curiosity, what sort of price range are
> their compilers going for these days and do they target anything
> interesting?

As to pricing, I would rather leave that to the respective companies.   I can
say
the compilers are not inexpensive, primarily because they target embedded
targets with carefully designed run-time environments that are intended to
serve applications that require a high-level of dependability.   When one
examines the world of Ada carefully, it becomes clear that creating an RTE
is no trivial exercise.   It is easy enough to generate code, but for embedded
environments (what Joyce Tokar calls, "deeply embedded"),  one must
craft the RTE so it supports all of the generated code in a predictable way.
It is almost like writing a small operating system for each platform.

DDC-I supports a wide variety of embedded targets.    Irvine is a C-Path
compiler so it can be ported to many different platforms.  Once again, it
is creating that pesky RTE that makes it expensive to build such compilers.

I overlooked Green Hills in my earlier posting.  We have clients who are
quite happy with their compilers too.

The important point is that GNAT, for all of the good will toward Ada it
has generated, is not the only game in town.   ACT has done a remarkable
job with their current business model and produced compilers of excellent
quality.   That is just the first step when considering "deeply embedded"
systems.  It is not enough to generate good code.    One of the key elements
in selecting an Ada compiler for a "deeply embedded" system is to
evaluate the relative qualities of the RTE.  This is a point often overlooked
by those who naively believe that C++ is as relevant as Ada for embedded
systems.

One reason I characterized the new owners of Aonix as a bunch of ignoramouses
is that they overlooked this point and laid-off some of their best people, the
people who knew how to differentiate their product from others by creating
reliable, stable, and efficient RTE's.   I'm not sure whether they have learned
the error of their decision yet, but one can hope they have.

Richard Riehle

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Georg Bauhaus]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote:
: What situations lead one to declare a type which is limited to a
: range of integers? I'm thinking fixed-size arrays, which I usually
: consider to be a design error.

not necessarily fixed, array(few range <>) implies arrays with
an upper limit of components.

add:
- documentary value,
- Design by Contract (since a number is required to be between 
some lo and hi, and a function ensures a number is in some
range indicated by the return type)
- building non-overlapping subtypes
- and, in general, if the "problem space" has some items ranging
between some lo and hi, such that an enumeration would not be
practical.

-- georg

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Adrian Hoe]

P S Norby wrote:

> "Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
> news:1041910244.361888@master.nyc.kbcfp.com...
> 
>>Larry Kilgallen wrote:
>>
>>>Please take off-topic discussions to alt.politics... or whatever is
>>>appropriate.
>>>
>>I think it's on-topic, since Ada is used in the development of
>>weapon systems that the imperialist West uses to subjugate the
>>peace-loving innocents of the Third World :-)
>>
>>
> 
> "If the scientists in the free countries will not make weapons to defend the
> freedom of their countries, freedom would be lost"
>   - Predident F. D. Roosevelt
> 
> 
> 


A native American clan, Mecca, was wiped out for the rise of America, 
the land of FREEDOM.

It's a SHAME for freedom.
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Adrian Hoe]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> I'd agree that Ada's lack of followers isn't really related to some sort of
> Left Wing reluctance to touch anything that might be associated with the
> military. Its more that there is a general perception that things designed
> for the military won't be suitable for commercial use and that corresponding
> commercial technology will be cheaper. Look at the Mil-Std-1553 bus. Its a
> good, reliable means of blipping bits up and down a wire and many companies
> that make avionics for both the military & commercial sector will use the
> 1553 for the military side of the shop, but never consider it for the
> commercial side.
> 
> Why? Probably mostly price. 1553 cards are still quite expensive when
> compared to something else like an Ethernet card, which is far more complex
> in what it has to do. Probably it starts with vendors figuring they can milk
> the government cash-cow and thus making little effort to reduce costs.
> (Government accounting policies help this along too.) Hence some similar
> technology goes to the private sector and competition + volume starts
> driving the cost down. Pretty soon, its a self-fulfilling prophecy: Military
> equipment costs more than commercial equipment.
> 
> Ada certainly messed up on that one too. Especially back in the early days,
> the prices were so high that any private citizen who thought he might be
> interested in getting involved with Ada would look at the price tag and
> immediately be consumed with an urge to deficate. RR Software helped that
> picture some, but not before the damage had already been done. There was
> also the overall damage done by the poor quality and lack of validation of
> the early compilers - leading people to believe that Ada was just another
> overpriced, unworkable government boondoggle. Early impressions are really
> hard to overcome.


The lack of Ada books is another reason why Ada is unable to catch on 
the band wagon. No doubt there are a few very good books on Ada. But 
the number is simply not enough to catch people's attention.

I came in contact with an Ada compiler on Apple CP/M in the early-mid 
80's. It was dirt cheap. It cost next to zero simply because I copied 
it from a computer shop. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Ada books. 
I could only understand some of the Ada syntax and lexical from its 
limited examples. There wasn't any Internet in my country then. 
Lacking of resources, I shut down on Ada.

Compare to C/C++, there are tonnes of C/C++ books out there. I have 
more than 25 C/C++ books in my personal library. But I have only 7 
books on Ada.

Another cause is the availability of C/C++ compilers/tools. C/C++ has 
wide support across any platforms which include PDAs. It is easy to 
develop an application for any PDAs using C/C++. In contrast, one has 
to go through long haul using Ada to develop a simple application for 
PDAs. This is why my company is still using C/C++ for developing PDAs' 
applications and we still struggling to ride on Ada.

Other than the technical merits of Ada, it still has a very wide gap 
to gain more acceptance as a development tools compare to others like 
C/C++.
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

Adrian Hoe wrote:
> Ted, if you ever come to this region, stop by Malaysia and give me a 
> call. I will buy you great lunch and dinner. See my reply to Hyman's.

I'll keep that in mind. I'd say its not likely, but then again my 
company *has* sent people to Malaysia and Singapore before.

I'm a really picky eater though. I'd probably have to eat every meal at 
the Malaysian Popeyes. :-)

 > Don't worry. Malaysia is safe.

Hmmm...methinks you doth protest too much on this point. :-)

I've no doubt a typical Malaysian has no problem with me personally. I 
play soccer with some regularly. I've also found myself in more 
dangerous places for a blond blue-eyed pasty-skinned individual (eg: 
Camden, NJ and the Desire housing projects in New Orleans. Both at night 
too.) Still, I suspect I'm way safer staying here in Oklahoma. I just 
have to keep away from Federal buildings. :-)

...and trailer parks (tornadoes)

...and the woods during hunting season (drunk guys with weapons)

...and anyone named "John Wayne" something (serial killers)

...and postal workers (shooting sprees)

...and the roads anytime after midnight on the weekends (drunk drivers)


Hmmmm....Malaysia, huh? :-)

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Ted Dennison]

Hyman Rosen wrote:
> Back in engineering school we would occasionally joke about going
> to work making bombs after graduation. The issue never really
> arose for me since I went into programming, and I've always worked
> on stuff that had nothing to do with weapons systems. Not that I
> think it would bother me to do so (insert obligatory reference to
> Tom Lehrer's song about Werner von Braun :-)

Its arisen for me on occasion. I've spent most of my career working on 
DoD projects. I find most people in DoD work are actually quite 
conservative politically, which leads me to belive most of us liberals 
opt out of DoD work at the get-go. I know at least one friend of mine 
from college did just that. However, a suprising amount of DoD work is 
more about *saving* lives than taking them. Some of it, like the NASA 
stuff, is as noble a cause as you can devote your time to. *The* most 
noble, IMHO, but that's another diatribe for another time.

Only twice have I ever felt I couldn't work on something for moral 
reasons. One was the time I was offered a job by a smartbomb maker. In a 
way, smarter bombs actually save lives too when compared to the 
alternative of using larger or more dumb bombs, which is what would 
happen, make no mistake.  But I just didn't feel like devoting a 
(possibly large) part of my life to helping make bombs.

The other actually had nothing to do with the DoD. For a while we (my 
old group at Martin-Marietta) were considering making a tank simulator 
for the Chineese army. This was about 2 years after Tienamen. I had a 
mental image of sitting in the simulator cockpit trying to get the 
"crunch" sound right when the tank rolls over the head of a protester. 
No thanks.

It so happened that during the massacre I was off work for a while in 
prepration for my wedding, and had nothing better to do all day than sit 
and watch everything go down on CNN. With the state of mind I was in 
after that, it would have been an exeedingly bad idea to put me anywhere 
near a representative of the Chineese military for about 4 years 
afterward...

My apologies to our Chineese readers for getting their c.l.a. access 
revoked.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[faust]

 Adrian Hoe <mailbox@nospam.adrianhoe.com> ,  emitted these fragments:

>Could the use of Ada to develop weapon systems the main hatred against 
>Ada?

The DOD ( Department of Death )  mandate certainly was a negative
point for Ada.

-- 
natsu-gusa ya     / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato
summer grasses / strong ones          / dreams site
 
Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldier's dreams
(Basho trans. Stryk)

Making bombs after graduation ( was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[faust]

 Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> ,  emitted these fragments:

>Back in engineering school we would occasionally joke about going
>to work making bombs after graduation. The issue never really
>arose for me since I went into programming, and I've always worked
>on stuff that had nothing to do with weapons systems. 

True story follows:

A Rabbi I know worked at a shul attended by many senior figures from
Los Alamos National Laboratory's applied theoretical and computational
physics section ( the nuclear weapons design division ) . He was a
young man then and was anti-war and anit-nuke. 

One Friday, he let lose with a firey sermon about the evils of
warmongers. He has intended it to be a call to repentance addressed to
the nuclear designers in his shul.

After the service, he was approached by several of them.
They congratulated him sincerely on preaching such a "anti-Russian"
sermon.

I heard him recount this rather ruefully as an example of how we
practice self delusion.

-- 
natsu-gusa ya     / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato
summer grasses / strong ones          / dreams site
 
Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldier's dreams
(Basho trans. Stryk)

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Pascal Obry]

Adrian Hoe <mailbox@nospam.adrianhoe.com> writes:

> I came in contact with an Ada compiler on Apple CP/M in the early-mid
> 80's. It was dirt cheap. It cost next to zero simply because I copied it
> from a computer shop. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any Ada books. I could
> only understand some of the Ada syntax and lexical from its limited
> examples. There wasn't any Internet in my country then. Lacking of
> resources, I shut down on Ada.

Good, now we are in 2003, we have Internet, 2 zero cost compilers for students,
many books, lots of Internet resources (too much to be read in a short period
of time), a living news group (except for 70% OT messages ;) So all this is
fixed! Ada is going to rock this year!

Pascal.

-- 

--|------------------------------------------------------
--| Pascal Obry                           Team-Ada Member
--| 45, rue Gabriel Peri - 78114 Magny Les Hameaux FRANCE
--|------------------------------------------------------
--|         http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal.obry
--| "The best way to travel is by means of imagination"
--|
--| gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.pgp.net --recv-key C1082595

Re: Making bombs after graduation ( was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[u.r. faust]

> > I heard him recount this rather ruefully as an example of how we
> > practice self delusion.
 
> Probably a little bit of it going both ways...  For him to expect them
> to change over and agree with his perspective seems pretty wishful.

True.
He was younger then.
He is older and a bit more cynical now.

-- 
natsu-gusa ya  / tsuwamono-domo-ga / yume no ato
summer grasses / strong ones       / dreams site
 
Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldier's dreams
(Basho trans. Stryk)

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

I'm not sure what Joyce meant by "deeply embedded" - I'd guess that
differentiates from products where you run on top a commercial OS tailored
for realtime. (VxWorks, realtime flavors of Linux, etc?) I suppose there
will always be hardware out there that is not amenable to running a
commercial RTOS and so we will always need RTKs that come with compilers to
do that job. (My current computer is one such device)

I'd agree that the RTK is one of the harder parts of such a compiler, but
the good news is that it is relatively easily unbundled from the compiler
and generalized. That's kind of how we got to realtime OS's - RTKs and
commercial OS's migrating to a common point in the middle. It would seem
like a wise business decision to split off the RTK into something like RTEMS
that can be language/compiler independent and keep the compiler making OS
calls that would likely be supportable in a non-realtime environment such as
your typical workstation. (Something like the Posix calls that I believe
RTEMS supports.) That way, you've got the option of saying "I don't care if
the embedded world uses Ada or C or C++ or 'Embedded Cobol' - I can market
the RTK to them."

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E1F4B6D.A8D5172F@adaworks.com...
>
> As to pricing, I would rather leave that to the respective companies.   I
can
> say
> the compilers are not inexpensive, primarily because they target embedded
> targets with carefully designed run-time environments that are intended to
> serve applications that require a high-level of dependability.   When one
> examines the world of Ada carefully, it becomes clear that creating an RTE
> is no trivial exercise.   It is easy enough to generate code, but for
embedded
> environments (what Joyce Tokar calls, "deeply embedded"),  one must
> craft the RTE so it supports all of the generated code in a predictable
way.
> It is almost like writing a small operating system for each platform.
>
> DDC-I supports a wide variety of embedded targets.    Irvine is a C-Path
> compiler so it can be ported to many different platforms.  Once again, it
> is creating that pesky RTE that makes it expensive to build such
compilers.
>
> I overlooked Green Hills in my earlier posting.  We have clients who are
> quite happy with their compilers too.
>
> The important point is that GNAT, for all of the good will toward Ada it
> has generated, is not the only game in town.   ACT has done a remarkable
> job with their current business model and produced compilers of excellent
> quality.   That is just the first step when considering "deeply embedded"
> systems.  It is not enough to generate good code.    One of the key
elements
> in selecting an Ada compiler for a "deeply embedded" system is to
> evaluate the relative qualities of the RTE.  This is a point often
overlooked
> by those who naively believe that C++ is as relevant as Ada for embedded
> systems.
>
> One reason I characterized the new owners of Aonix as a bunch of
ignoramouses
> is that they overlooked this point and laid-off some of their best people,
the
> people who knew how to differentiate their product from others by creating
> reliable, stable, and efficient RTE's.   I'm not sure whether they have
learned
> the error of their decision yet, but one can hope they have.
>
> Richard Riehle
>

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing

[Marin David Condic]

Most of the resources are there to make Ada quite useful to the student
environment and that is cause for hope. There really should be no
impediments to learning and using Ada as a student or hobbyist. (short of
possibly not finding a book translated into one's native tongue.) The trick
is also to make it viable in the commercial world so that those students and
hobbyists can actually find jobs once they've invested in learning it. Also,
it would be helpful if there was something going along with Ada that gave
reasons outside of the language itself as to why students and hobbyists
should bother to learn it. (Example: Someone might want to learn C because
they wanted to play around with Linux. Someone might bother to learn Java
because they wanted to learn how to make cool things that run from a web
page. What does Ada provide now that might have a similar attraction? What
*could* Ada provide that would be an attraction?)

And yes, I'd heartily agree that getting rid of the off-topic crud would
make C.L.A. a better attraction to Ada newbies. The occasional drift may be
fine, but when things go into political outbursts that others will find
offensive, it can only serve to discourage readership.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Pascal Obry <p.obry@wanadoo.fr> wrote in message
news:u7kdcrrd9.fsf@wanadoo.fr...
>
> Good, now we are in 2003, we have Internet, 2 zero cost compilers for
students,
> many books, lots of Internet resources (too much to be read in a short
period
> of time), a living news group (except for 70% OT messages ;) So all this
is
> fixed! Ada is going to rock this year!
>

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[John English]

Larry Kilgallen wrote:
> 
> In article <3e18f3f3_1@news.tm.net.my>, Adrian Hoe <mailbox@*nospam*adrianhoe.com> writes:
> 
> > I find off-topic entertaining, sometime. Agree not?
> 
> There will be some off-topics of interest to some people, but others
> will only be annoyed each time.  The reason Usenet is not one giant
> newsgroup is so that people can segregate their interests and join
> only the discussions that _they_ are interested in.

This all started as a result of a flippant remark I made on the original
thread about access to .mil servers from outside the US (complete with
smiley). Who would have thought an innocent attempt at humour would
generate so much heat and so little light?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[John English]

Adrian Hoe wrote:
> 
> The lack of Ada books is another reason why Ada is unable to catch on
> the band wagon. No doubt there are a few very good books on Ada. But
> the number is simply not enough to catch people's attention.

Publishers have cut back on the number of Ada books they publish
because there isn't as big a market as there is from books on e.g.
Java. Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
 Senior Lecturer           | http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je
 Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
 University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Adrian Hoe]

John English wrote:

> Adrian Hoe wrote:
> 
>>The lack of Ada books is another reason why Ada is unable to catch on
>>the band wagon. No doubt there are a few very good books on Ada. But
>>the number is simply not enough to catch people's attention.
>>
> 
> Publishers have cut back on the number of Ada books they publish
> because there isn't as big a market as there is from books on e.g.
> Java. Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me...


Argh... Chicken and egg problem again! ;-)
-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

To some extent, yes. But remember that it is not now nor has it ever been
the case that the book publishers are the ones to make a language popular.
They merely follow a trend that is already set in motion by other factors.
When Ada came out I remember seeing dozens of books on it from various
sources. Everybody had high expectations - thinking Ada might become the
next Cobol. That obviously didn't happen and it wasn't the lack of books to
blame for it.

Given that there are a handful of Ada books available free of charge on the
net and the language doesn't change that fast, I'd say there were adequate
resources in that respect. A few more books that dealt with more specialized
areas might be helpful. ("Ada and compiler writing" or "Ada for realtime
systems" or "Ada for graphics & gui applications" or similar specialties.)
Actually, creating some specialized books and putting them on the web might
be a key factor in getting Ada adopted in some new domains. In other words,
stop trying to generate an interest in Ada and instead generate an interest
in something else that, oh, by the way, happens to have all this clever Ada
code that goes with it.

Any academics out there with an interest in some new area of computing that
might want to use Ada as a tool?

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Adrian Hoe <mailbox@nospam.adrianhoe.com> wrote in message
news:3E22E61E.9020400@nospam.adrianhoe.com...
>
>
> Argh... Chicken and egg problem again! ;-)

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Kevin Cline]

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message news:<3E1F4B6D.A8D5172F@adaworks.com>...
> The important point is that GNAT, for all of the good will toward Ada it
> has generated, is not the only game in town.   ACT has done a remarkable
> job with their current business model and produced compilers of excellent
> quality.   That is just the first step when considering "deeply embedded"
> systems.  It is not enough to generate good code.    One of the key elements
> in selecting an Ada compiler for a "deeply embedded" system is to
> evaluate the relative qualities of the RTE.  This is a point often overlooked
> by those who naively believe that C++ is as relevant as Ada for embedded
> systems.

Commercial RTE's like VxWorks and LynxOS have been ported 
to most platforms and are much more popular than any Ada RTE. 
I don't know if they are better or worse, but what is most
important to system architects is that they are widely known to work,
and they are well-understood by many embedded developers.
In the real-time shops I've worked with, proposing Ada for a new
project would be considered rather radical.

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Pat Rogers]

"Kevin Cline" <kcline17@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ba162549.0301141202.235b38c0@posting.google.com...
> Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:<3E1F4B6D.A8D5172F@adaworks.com>...
>> <snip>
> Commercial RTE's like VxWorks and LynxOS have been ported
> to most platforms and are much more popular than any Ada RTE.
> I don't know if they are better or worse, but what is most
> important to system architects is that they are widely known to
work,
> and they are well-understood by many embedded developers.
> In the real-time shops I've worked with, proposing Ada for a new
> project would be considered rather radical.

So use Ada on VxWorks or LynxOS or ...

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Adrian Hoe]

Kevin Cline wrote:

> Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message news:<3E1F4B6D.A8D5172F@adaworks.com>...
> 
>>The important point is that GNAT, for all of the good will toward Ada it
>>has generated, is not the only game in town.   ACT has done a remarkable
>>job with their current business model and produced compilers of excellent
> 
> Commercial RTE's like VxWorks and LynxOS have been ported 
> to most platforms and are much more popular than any Ada RTE. 
> I don't know if they are better or worse, but what is most
> important to system architects is that they are widely known to work,
> and they are well-understood by many embedded developers.
> In the real-time shops I've worked with, proposing Ada for a new
> project would be considered rather radical.
> 

Matre OS looks promising and quite easy to work with.

-- 
type Dmitry is new Adrian;           -- Adrian Hoe
                                      -- http://adrianhoe.com
                                      -- Remove *nospam* to email

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[John R. Strohm]

"Kevin Cline" <kcline17@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ba162549.0301141202.235b38c0@posting.google.com...
> Commercial RTE's like VxWorks and LynxOS have been ported
> to most platforms and are much more popular than any Ada RTE.
> I don't know if they are better or worse, but what is most
> important to system architects is that they are widely known to work,
> and they are well-understood by many embedded developers.
> In the real-time shops I've worked with, proposing Ada for a new
> project would be considered rather radical.

Back when I was doing Ada, on whatever platform, the runtime was part of the
total Ada toolset package.  It came already integrated with the rest of the
toolkit.  The customer normally had to write a board support package to
integrate the runtime with the peculiar target hardware, but you have to do
that with EVERY executive (unless your hardware is COMPLETELY
off-the-shelf - very rare in military embedded systems - and the vendor
already supplied you a HIGH-QUALITY BSP to go with your boards - also very
rare in embedded systems).

And, for the record, a competently-written Ada runtime fits in about 4K.
(4K bytes on a byte machine, 4K words on a word machine, 4K whatever on a
whatever machine.)  (Ichbiah made that statement in an Ada training video I
saw back in about 1990 or 1991.  I checked it for the TI 320C30 Ada toolset
from Tartan Labs, and it was dead on target.)

I don't know how much VxWorks or LynxOS takes.  Anyone have the numbers
handy?

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[AG]

"John English" <je@brighton.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:3E22B217.FA0DB29@brighton.ac.uk...

> Publishers have cut back on the number of Ada books they publish
> because there isn't as big a market as there is from books on e.g.
> Java. Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me...

Mind you, it's not as simple as that. Some years ago
when the LRM/ARM/Rationale was [first?] published
by Springer-Verlag I was looking to buy the whole set.
One of the largest techinical bookshops around here
had trouble even finding a person who knew what
I'm talking about.

When they finally did, they quoted such an outrageous
price for the books that, even in those early days of
the internet, it would be several times cheaper to order
in direct from the publisher including postage, taxes
and everything.

I finally got the best deal I could find from a certain
on-line book shop. Even so, I had to point out that
the books they listed as "available next quarter" had
been available for some months. At least, whoever
handled that request brought the books on line soon
enough (and I even got a discount for pointing that
out, which is always a good thing :-)

But, looks like I know of at least one case where
published book(s) availability had no significant
impact on anything, unless you really knew what you
are looking for ...

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

A commercial RTOS would most likely be doing a whole lot more than an Ada
RTK, so a comparison would be unfair. An Ada RTK only needs to supply task
scheduling, time and whatever low-level subprograms are needed to support
compilation. *Maybe* I/O, but it is certainly not required. A commercial
RTOS is probably supplying all sorts of device drivers and other I/O related
things that are not needed for Ada support.

Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
it will actually work without too many serious bugs - and getting
appropriate support tools that work with the compiler/RTOS/board/development
platform - and not having to cobble all those things together on your own
from bits & pieces downloaded from the internet - and getting support from a
vendor so when the unforseen problems arise, there's someone knowledgeable
around to bail your project out of the deep water - and getting your
personnel trained up on Ada and flogged into using something they hate - and
convincing your boss that it isn't going to add cost, time or risk to the
project, but will instead bring about immense new profits. Did I miss
anything? :-)

Seriously, it really is pretty hard to get Ada into some embedded shop where
it has not been used before and doesn't have a firm belief that it is going
to do some significant good to make it worth the risks. Even if there isn't
outright hostility to Ada, a lot of pieces have to be in place just to make
the playing field equal and *still* there is risk with unproven technology,
so there *must* be some significant perceived advantage. If Ada wants to
worm its way into embedded computing and come out with a ranking above
"other" in the "Language Of Choice" surveys, a *lot* of work would have to
be done.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

John R. Strohm <strohm@airmail.net> wrote in message
news:49BFB7592CBCCE76.BF5F1FAC531DF3EC.585B6F261FE1D006@lp.airnews.net...
>
> Back when I was doing Ada, on whatever platform, the runtime was part of
the
> total Ada toolset package.  It came already integrated with the rest of
the
> toolkit.  The customer normally had to write a board support package to
> integrate the runtime with the peculiar target hardware, but you have to
do
> that with EVERY executive (unless your hardware is COMPLETELY
> off-the-shelf - very rare in military embedded systems - and the vendor
> already supplied you a HIGH-QUALITY BSP to go with your boards - also very
> rare in embedded systems).
>
> And, for the record, a competently-written Ada runtime fits in about 4K.
> (4K bytes on a byte machine, 4K words on a word machine, 4K whatever on a
> whatever machine.)  (Ichbiah made that statement in an Ada training video
I
> saw back in about 1990 or 1991.  I checked it for the TI 320C30 Ada
toolset
> from Tartan Labs, and it was dead on target.)
>
> I don't know how much VxWorks or LynxOS takes.  Anyone have the numbers
> handy?
>
>
>

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
> RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
> RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
> it will actually work without too many serious bugs

I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
such systems before.

Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.

The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
the Ada.

I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
during the Seventies and Eighties.

Richard Riehle

RE: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Robert C. Leif]

Richard,
You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
uneducated in technology.
Bob Leif

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]
On Behalf Of Richard Riehle
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 9:43 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New
Ada compiler for .NET)

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
> RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
> RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
> it will actually work without too many serious bugs

I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
such systems before.

Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.

The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
the Ada.

I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
during the Seventies and Eighties.

Richard Riehle

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[chris.danx]

Robert C. Leif wrote:
> Richard,
> You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
> uneducated in technology.

Not just the US, the uk and probably most countries worldwide suffer 
from this ill.


Chris
-- 
for personal replies change spamoff to chris

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[John R. Strohm]

"Richard Riehle" <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E259DAD.7B21B061@adaworks.com...
> Marin David Condic wrote:
>
> > Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
> > RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board &
the
> > RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable
that
> > it will actually work without too many serious bugs
>
> I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
> system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
> They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
> highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
> that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
> such systems before.
>
> Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
> jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
> that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
> decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.
>
> The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
> value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
> such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
> the Ada.

Just out of curiosity, did the Xerox executives in question give any kind of
explanation WHY they outlawed Ada?

One would think that, if the project manager did a decent job of detailing
the actual cost and schedule savings on the Ada project, that it would get
the attention of the beancounters.

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle]

"John R. Strohm" wrote:

> Just out of curiosity, did the Xerox executives in question give any kind of
> explanation WHY they outlawed Ada?

As nearly as anyone could determine, they had no reason other than that they
decided to standardize on C.

> One would think that, if the project manager did a decent job of detailing
> the actual cost and schedule savings on the Ada project, that it would get
> the attention of the beancounters.

The project manager was giving a lot of success story seminars at conferences,
especially Tri-Ada conferences.    However, his was the only development
group that had enjoyed success with Ada.   Everyone else was using other
languages, including, if I recall correctly, Mesa.

It looks, from the outside, like another example of the kind of stupidity about
computing once typical of  people at the executive level of Xerox.  It is hard
to know if they have gotten any better.   They certainly never learned any
lessons from PARC -- although the rest of the world did.

Richard Riehle

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Jeffrey Carter]

Robert C. Leif wrote:
> You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
> uneducated in technology.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org [mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]
> On Behalf Of Richard Riehle
> I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
> Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
> and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
> has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
> to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
> been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
> during the Seventies and Eighties.

I'm not convinced this is "dumb management" as far as DOD contractors 
are concerned. Look at the contracts in question; you'll usually find 
that the contractor maximizes its profits by maximizing the cost of the 
project. Five software engineers at $100k/yr for one year is a lot less 
attractive than 100 coders at $30k/yr for six years. That the quality of 
the software created by the former is orders of magnitudes better than 
that of the latter isn't a factor. Indeed, if the contract is written 
right, a project that is finally terminated without creating any usable 
software may be the most profitable road for the contractor, and it 
never seems to affect their ability to win more contracts.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam! Spam!"
Monty Python's Flying Circus

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

>  Indeed, if the contract is written
> right, a project that is finally terminated without creating any usable
> software may be the most profitable road for the contractor, and it
> never seems to affect their ability to win more contracts.

Polonius, commenting on Hamlet's madness,

          " 'Tis true, 'tis pity.  'Tis pity 'tis 'tis true."

The best outcome for a contractor:  software is accepted,
paid for, but never used.   No one discovers that it does
not do the job originally intended to be done.

Standish Group has catalogued a lot of such projects.

Richard Riehle

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

Well, I write stuff without an RTOS every day and you are right that Ada
provides all you need to do this sort of job. Still, an RTOS can provide you
a lot of things that may make life easier. But of course you may then have
price or license issues on the product you're selling and so on, so you've
got engineering tradeoffs whatever way you go.

Its still a tough sell to management - they do get enamoured by the latest
fads and advertizing glitz. But its my belief that the root problem is that
Ada - while presenting real advantages - does not present a large enough
advantage to persuade people that it is worth the costs and risks to go use
it. If Ada concentrated on building up leverage within a specific domain, it
would be able to present a clear and convincing case that to do it with
anything else is just foolish. But that has to be a significant kind of
leverage.....


MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> wrote in message
news:3E259DAD.7B21B061@adaworks.com...
>
> I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
> system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
> They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
> highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
> that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
> such systems before.
>
> Xerox executives, with their customary skill at "grabbing defeat from the
> jaws of victory" (Smalltalk, Windows Operating systems, etc.),  decreed
> that Ada would not be allowed to be used for anymore systems.   This
> decree was made even in the face of compelling success with it.
>
> The project manager, in describing the project, remarked on the added
> value that Ada provided in eliminating the need for purchasing stuff
> such as VxWorks and related products.   Everything they needed was in
> the Ada.
>
> I see this kind of dumb management a lot in DoD contractor companies.
> Somehow, these corporate level people are so enamoured of the slick
> and glossy ads they fail to recognize quality when they see it.  Xerox
> has been particularly guilty of this kind of glitz thinking when it comes
> to computing.   They could own the marketplace now, if there had
> been a well-functioning brain in the excecutive levels of the company
> during the Seventies and Eighties.
>
> Richard Riehle
>

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda compiler for .NET)

[Marin David Condic]

Ahhh but it would be a boon to the economy if more technologists were
educated in the fields of Business & Economics. We often see evidence here
in this group that technologists have insufficient understanding of
Economics when proposing or attempting some of the things they do. Note that
many of the management in technology companies were drawn from the ranks of
engineers so actually they have a better record of being trained in
technology than the other way around.

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

chris.danx <spamoff.danx@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:9ClV9.212$bG2.626@news13-win.server.ntlworld.com...
> Robert C. Leif wrote:
> > Richard,
> > You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
> > uneducated in technology.
>
> Not just the US, the uk and probably most countries worldwide suffer
> from this ill.
>
>
> Chris
> --
> for personal replies change spamoff to chris
>

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda compiler for .NET)

[Jerry Petrey]

Jeffrey Carter wrote:

> Robert C. Leif wrote:
> > You have just explained a major problem US economy, executives who are
> > uneducated in technology.
> >
> >
>
> I'm not convinced this is "dumb management" as far as DOD contractors
> are concerned. Look at the contracts in question; you'll usually find
> that the contractor maximizes its profits by maximizing the cost of the
> project. Five software engineers at $100k/yr for one year is a lot less
> attractive than 100 coders at $30k/yr for six years. That the quality of
> the software created by the former is orders of magnitudes better than
> that of the latter isn't a factor. Indeed, if the contract is written
> right, a project that is finally terminated without creating any usable
> software may be the most profitable road for the contractor, and it
> never seems to affect their ability to win more contracts.
>
> --
> Jeff Carter
>

Unfortunately there is a lot of truth to this.  I worked on a nuclear project some

20 years ago where the company had a time and materials contract with the
government.  The hardware team had got the hardware working by writing their
own software but the software team refused to use it at all - they spent a year
creating
massive documents and design materials but when we were less than 3 months from
the delivery date, they realized they still had no code.  So they brought in some
40
contractors to work overtime trying to crank out the code - but of course nothing
workable resulted and the contract was finally canceled.  I'm sure that management

realized this 'mythical man month' problem but the more they spent, the more they
made in any case.

Convincing management that a small team of exceptional people with the proper
tools can do a better and cheaper job that a large team of 'average' people with
error prone tools is not easy to do - it seems to go against their basic instinct
that the more people you manage, the more successful manager you are.

Jerry
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Jerry Petrey
-- Senior Principal Systems Engineer - Navigation (GPS/INS), Guidance, & Control
-- Raytheon Missile Systems          - Member Team Ada & Team Forth
-- NOTE: please remove <NOSPAM> in email address to reply
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda compiler for .NET)

[Jeffrey Carter]

Jerry Petrey wrote:
 >
 > So they
 > brought in some 40 contractors to work overtime trying to crank out
 > the code - but of course nothing workable resulted and the contract
 > was finally canceled.  I'm sure that management realized this
 > 'mythical man month' problem but the more they spent, the more they
 > made in any case.
 >
 > Convincing management that a small team of exceptional people with
 > the proper tools can do a better and cheaper job that a large team of
 >  'average' people with error prone tools is not easy to do - it seems
 >  to go against their basic instinct that the more people you manage,
 > the more successful manager you are.

Precisely. This isn't "dumb" management--this is smart management! The 
company maximizes its profits and the manager, having managed a large 
and profitable project, gets positive attention and promotion.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Monsieur Arthur King, who has the brain of a duck, you know."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Warren W. Gay VE3WWG]

Richard Riehle wrote:
> "John R. Strohm" wrote:
>>Just out of curiosity, did the Xerox executives in question give any kind of
>>explanation WHY they outlawed Ada?
> 
> As nearly as anyone could determine, they had no reason other than that they
> decided to standardize on C.
> 
>>One would think that, if the project manager did a decent job of detailing
>>the actual cost and schedule savings on the Ada project, that it would get
>>the attention of the beancounters.
> 
> The project manager was giving a lot of success story seminars at conferences,
> especially Tri-Ada conferences.    However, his was the only development
> group that had enjoyed success with Ada.   Everyone else was using other
> languages, including, if I recall correctly, Mesa.
> 
> It looks, from the outside, like another example of the kind of stupidity about
> computing once typical of  people at the executive level of Xerox.  It is hard
> to know if they have gotten any better.   They certainly never learned any
> lessons from PARC -- although the rest of the world did.
> 
> Richard Riehle

Out of "idle curiosity", were these "excutives" former "developers"?
I can picture X-programmers turned executives from having their own
mis-informed biases, or biases that should be re-checked with new
information. My own personal experience is that those that have had
prior "experience" (or think they've had) are the most difficult ones
to deal with ;-)

wwg.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: NewAda compiler for .NET)

[Richard Riehle]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:

> Richard Riehle wrote:
>
> > It looks, from the outside, like another example of the kind of stupidity about
> > computing once typical of  people at the executive level of Xerox.  It is hard
> > to know if they have gotten any better.   They certainly never learned any
> > lessons from PARC -- although the rest of the world did.
> >
> > Richard Riehle
>
> Out of "idle curiosity", were these "excutives" former "developers"?
> I can picture X-programmers turned executives from having their own
> mis-informed biases, or biases that should be re-checked with new
> information. My own personal experience is that those that have had
> prior "experience" (or think they've had) are the most difficult ones
> to deal with ;-)

I don't know the profile of the executives giving the order.   If I were
to go through my notes, I could find the name of the manager who was
having the success with Ada and giving the seminars.   However, this
is a long dead issue.   It was an example, one of many, that illustrated
the potential for Ada to be successful outside the military environment.
At one time, when people were using for such projects, and then those
projects were mysteriously cancelled, some Ada advocates were
suspecting a conspiracy by Microsoft, Borland, or some other company
with a non-Ada agenda.  Of course, that would never actually happen
since those companies never really felt threatened by Ada.

With the overpriced compilers being supplied by the Ada compiler
publishers, no conspiracy was necessary.

Richard Riehle

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Colin Paul Gloster]

Richard Riehle wrote in news:3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com :

"[..]

It can be conjectured that the DoD mandate was, in part responsible             
for the resistance to Ada, but not because it was designed for weapon           
systems. [..]"

How widespread such campaigns were I do not know, but I once was told by
somebody that he and others involved in university (not in America) had
successfully campaigned against Ada being taught. This person told me that
he and his colleagues campaigned against Ada not because of the amount of
money involved, but because they were against war.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Marin David Condic]

Interesting, but rather foolish, I would think. There are all sorts of
technologies or other forms of human knowledge that have come about because
of some sort of military endeavor or military involvement. (Like, oh, mayby
things ranging from emergency room surgery techniques to most of the space
program?) Failure to study and employ such knowledge just because the
military once touched it sounds a little like cutting off one's nose to
spite one's face.

In any event, while I'm sure that there are many on college campuses who
would be capable of such an attitude towards Ada, I doubt that it had a lot
to do with its failure to catch on in a big way. I think it was more a
matter of mismanagement in the early stages and the technology not being
there to back up all the claims of wonderfulness. Basically, in the early
stages Ada just cost too much and didn't work and was taking too long too in
curing either of those problems. As a result it got a bad reputation and was
ignored in droves. Now the money that might have funded the sort of
improvements needed has dried up, so its advancement is going to be a slow
evolution based on the work of small companies and assorted hackers. Maybe
its better that way. At least whatever Ada gets at this point has been
rightfully earned and nobody is going to say "You got the job only because
of The Mandate..."

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Colin Paul Gloster <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> wrote in message
news:slrnb3a9p3.ph5.Colin_Paul_Gloster@camac.dcu.ie...
>
> How widespread such campaigns were I do not know, but I once was told by
> somebody that he and others involved in university (not in America) had
> successfully campaigned against Ada being taught. This person told me that
> he and his colleagues campaigned against Ada not because of the amount of
> money involved, but because they were against war.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Pat Rogers]

"Colin Paul Gloster" <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> wrote in message
news:slrnb3a9p3.ph5.Colin_Paul_Gloster@camac.dcu.ie...
> Richard Riehle wrote in news:3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com :
>
> "[..]
>
> It can be conjectured that the DoD mandate was, in part responsible
> for the resistance to Ada, but not because it was designed for
weapon
> systems. [..]"
>
> How widespread such campaigns were I do not know, but I once was
told by
> somebody that he and others involved in university (not in America)
had
> successfully campaigned against Ada being taught. This person told
me that
> he and his colleagues campaigned against Ada not because of the
amount of
> money involved, but because they were against war.

I bet he and his little friends used email to coordinate their
efforts.

"Its hard to be cynical when you're constantly amazed."

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <_RvZ9.24$Yd4.73802977@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>, "Pat Rogers" <progers@classwide.com> writes:
> "Colin Paul Gloster" <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> wrote in message
> news:slrnb3a9p3.ph5.Colin_Paul_Gloster@camac.dcu.ie...
>> Richard Riehle wrote in news:3E1EA349.6B97C328@adaworks.com :
>>
>> "[..]
>>
>> It can be conjectured that the DoD mandate was, in part responsible
>> for the resistance to Ada, but not because it was designed for
> weapon
>> systems. [..]"
>>
>> How widespread such campaigns were I do not know, but I once was
> told by
>> somebody that he and others involved in university (not in America)
> had
>> successfully campaigned against Ada being taught. This person told
> me that
>> he and his colleagues campaigned against Ada not because of the
> amount of
>> money involved, but because they were against war.
> 
> I bet he and his little friends used email to coordinate their
> efforts.

Certainly email existed without DoD funding.  It is TCP/IP that they
funded, and without that there would be other protocols.  To date
the alternatives do not seem to have prevailed, so the campaign
will need more effort.

Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET

[Marin David Condic]

Yes, but programming languages existed without DoD funding either. I think
the salient point is that e-mail across TCP/IP would be equivalent to Ada -
using something developed by the military. Those who loathe the military and
don't want to soil their hands by touching anything developed/used by the
military need to immediately stop utilizing the Internet. :-)

Oh, and BTW - if "The DoD Abandoned Ada" then it ought to be the *perfect*
thing for all the anti-Military folks out there to use. If the DoD abandoned
the language then it must be that it was just to "Peaceful" a language. :-)

MDC
--
======================================================================
Marin David Condic
I work for: http://www.belcan.com/
My project is: http://www.jast.mil/

Send Replies To: m c o n d i c @ a c m . o r g

    "I'd trade it all for just a little more"
        --  Charles Montgomery Burns, [4F10]
======================================================================

Larry Kilgallen <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:JCD2TY3nvc0j@eisner.encompasserve.org...
>
> Certainly email existed without DoD funding.  It is TCP/IP that they
> funded, and without that there would be other protocols.  To date
> the alternatives do not seem to have prevailed, so the campaign
> will need more effort.

Re: Ada Compiler Pricing (was Re: Hijacking a Thread was RE: New Ada compiler for .NET)

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen]

Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> writes:

> Marin David Condic wrote:
> 
> > Of course, there is nothing to stop one from using Ada on a commercial
> > RTOS - except for possibly finding a compiler that targets the board & the
> > RTOS - and getting it at a reasonable price - and feeling comfortable that
> > it will actually work without too many serious bugs
> 
> I remember the Ada project at Xerox where the team built the embedded
> system for a copier using Ada, and did not need to buy a separate RTOS.
> They used the one supplied by the Ada compiler publisher.  It was a
> highly successful project and the team, along with its manager, realized
> that Ada was a significant improvement over the way they had built
> such systems before.

The Xerox copier in the previous company I worked ran Linux....

-- 
Ole-Hj. Kristensen

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* You cannot consistently believe this sentence.
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