Re: How to get Ada to ?cross the chasm??

[Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>]

Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> writes:
> 	Then Ada has been doomed since 1980:
> "Designed by committee"		(so was COBOL and it lasted)

I don't see that as a problem: Haskell and Scheme were also designed by
committees and PL geeks are very fond of them.

> "Too large"

There's some confusion here, I wrote that

>> if "crossing the chasm" means getting everyone to read the 1000 page
>>(or whatever) ARM, then Ada is doomed.

That doesn't mean the language's largeness implies doom all by itself.
C++ is large but it's mainstream.  The issue is whether you have to read
a 1000 page document to use the language at all, or if it's sufficient
to start with a subset and expand outward from there.  Most C++ users
start with a subset, and I suspect not very many know the full language.
I myself certainly don't.

I would have thought starting with a subset of Ada is also legitimate,
but if it's not, then Ada is probably doomed.

> "Compiler is too slow"		(something wrong with one's software
> development practices when the compiler speed is of more concern than the
> lifetime of a correct application)

That was in the discussion of how to add more phrases to the CBSG, which
is to say, how to change its configuration in a deployment environment.
Randy's answer was to just include the Ada compiler as part of the
deployment, and add phrases by modifying and recompiling the Ada code.

I think Ada programmers are used to the idea of the development
environment and the deployment environment being two different things.
A big slow development environment might be tolerable, but if the Ada
compiler is part of the deployment as well, then its size and speed have
to be considered again.  The program takes 7 seconds to recompile on a
fast x86 box, and 1.5 minutes on an ARM server that I just tested.

Since anything post-deployment is "run time", that number has to be
considered as part of the runtime performance, which makes GNAT (with
this implementation approach) look pretty terrible compared to something
like Forth or Picolisp.

Anyway, one of the claimed advantages of Ada over C++ is that Ada's
module system makes compilation faster, so perhaps you're trying to have
it both ways.