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

[Lucretia <laguest9000@googlemail.com>]

On Wednesday, 18 April 2018 14:29:30 UTC+1, Jere  wrote:

> 1.  It favors static allocation over dynamic whenever possible.  This is
> huge for small embedded systems.

So does Ada.
 
> 2.  It is currently implemented on LLVM which is a huge pool of untapped
> user base for Ada (I don't think there are any current Ada implementations
> on LLVM with the most recent being somewhere around GNAT 4.7 or 4.8? Or
> do any other compiler vendors target LLVM at all?).

Last LLVM based version, from Apple, is llvmgcc42-2336.11, which is based on LLVM 2.7 and based on GCC 4.0.1 (sources say) - 4.2 (version above).

Which is ancient and would require rewriting the glue between GNAT and LLVM.

> 4.  It is not hindered by backwards compatibility concerns.  They take

There are a lot of people who would love to see a new Ada version break away from the previous versions, possibly even a rewrite removing all the crap that's not really required and basically, an Ada for the 21st century.

> 6.  The license situation is much nicer out of the gate.  There are two 

See above comments.
 
> 7.  The language restrictions it sets makes a lot of typically "runtime"
> errors into compiler errors.  The tradeoff here is the compiler is
> very much more picky than even an Ada compiler.  It is much more difficult
> to get a complex program to compile in Rust than it is in Ada (which 
> is slightly ironic given the learning curve comment alluded to in another
> message earlier).  They say that the borrow checker is a cruel mistress, 
> and they do not lie.

Yet people still bitch about how "hard" it is to get an Ada program to compile.

> I'm not sure the languages are similar enough to do a fair comparison.  They
> both approach things very differently.  Ada targets software development
> much more (Readability, problem domain describing types, etc.).  Rust doesn't

This is where Ada really shines, but it could go further with endian describing. There is no other language which does this, at all

Luke.