Re: Portable GUI (was Re: Future with Ada)

[Michal Nowak <vinnie@inetia.pl>]

On 01-12-20 at 11:37 Richard Riehle wrote:

>I am now reading the language comparison papers from my
>NPS class, "Ada As A Second Language."    Nearly all of the
>students in this class have at least two other languages:
>C++ and Java.   Some have Fortran from their undergraduate
>engineering but have forgotten much of it.   Others have a
>smattering of other languages.
>
>One of the last assignments for this class was to write a paper
>comparing Ada to one of their "first" languages.    Some
>compared Ada to C++.  Most compared it to Java.   A few
>compared it to multiple languages, usually C++ and Ada. One
>even included a comparison to PL/I.

>Almost all of them prefer Ada to C++.    Some don't like Ada
>very much due to difficulties they had completing some of their
>assignments.   Most expressed a newfound appreciation for Ada,
>even as they expected it to be dull, dead, and a waste of time.

At least, they were interested in Ada (less or more). Just for
curiosity - what year of study is it (or for how long they know
Java/C++)? I was presented Ada on VIII semester (just 2 lectures,
intro + distibuted system annex). The rest was Java RMI, CORBA,
PVM and MPI. We had to the same distibuted application in all
above environments and compare them. This short time caused, that
Ada wasn't presented well enough (we were familiar with PVM, Java
from previous semesters). From 2nd semester, when C and then C++
and Java were introduced, nealy every programs we were writting in
these languages (there were of course others languages, but these
seemed most functional). Most of us writes in Java or C++ at work,
so after all this time (nearly 4 years), they are thinking in C++
or Java and see the world through this perspective
(i.e. Object->method()).

I was talking with my colleagues what they think about Ada, here
are some opinions:
1. Are there any data structures like Lists, Queues, Hash Tables, etc
  in Ada? Such structures exists in Java.
2. Does it have any visual extensions or GUI builder like JBuilder
  or Visual C++ (hmm, I did not looked at them seriously, because
  thay have trouble of compiling Java program from command line
  if they were without a JBuilder. Reading through other posts,
  shows, that after all I should have take this seriously).
  In fact, they wanted something like Borland C++ Builder, where
  click, click - and GUI is ready. CLAW or GWindows was not an
  option for them.
3. It has great tasking model and protected objects. If Ada was
  more popular here (Poland), they were willing to learn it deeper.
4. Troubles in using Strings - this is not strange to me, idea of Ada
  Strings was not presented;
5. GLADE was easy to use, espacially writting callbacks (when compared
  to SUN rpcgen horror), quite easy to use;
6. Troubles in using Reference Manual. Some needed something like
  Java Doc. Predefined language environment (annex A), is much
  more poor in compare to Java Docs.
7. It is Pascal, what's that Pascal again? (total C-guys)

Ada was taken better than C++, but wore than Java. Most of opinions
favored Java because of reasons mentioned in point 1 and 6.

I'm trying to make Ada presentation on next semester on my
university on a special interest meeting. Maybe if some eariler
year students will see Ada (especially about tasking), they
will use Ada on some lab projects.

>In nearly every paper, especially those comparing Ada to Java,
>the students said they would be more inclined to use Java because
>of the easy-to-use development environment.    Even those who
>really took to Ada noted their disappointment with the available
>tools for creating, testing, and debugging programs when comparing
>their Java experience with their Ada experience.
>
>The conclusion:   Ada is attractive, as a language.   It is not attractive
>when one examines the associated development tools and libraries. We
>have a long way to go.

Ada still has performance advantage over Java. But there are slowly
cominig Java compilers to native code. If some $$$ company will put
hands on it....

-Mike

Marry Christmas and Happy New Year - with Ada - to all of you.