Re: Embedded Keynote Speaker Mentions Ada

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Benjamin Ketcham wrote:
> Cesar Rabak <crabak@acm.org> wrote:
> 
>>Even in a non commercial arena, why can't we convince Open Source
>>enthusiats to write the system software in Ada and start to make a
>>difference in this realm (my perception of their account on bugs is that
>>they have a better response time, not intrinsical better designed in
>>security)?
> 
> Well, this is a very good point.  I would suggest that a way to
> make Ada much more popular, would be to recode the Linux kernel
> in Ada.  

I think your heart is in the right place, but I would suggest
that an Ada clone of Linux makes it a wanna-be. In some senses
it is probably true that Linux was a UNIX-wannabe, though Linus
admitted that it was easier to use existing standards (POSIX
for example) than to develop new one(s).

I would suggest that an Ada O/S with the same principles learned
from UNIX et al. would be a good thing, but let's not do
a "UNIX version in Ada" or a "Linux version in Ada".

Radically new O/S research is welcomed also but the danger
there is that something radically different is not likely to get off
the ground. So I would suggest that a practical Ada O/S with
"normal features" could be developed without the need to
follow a standard.

Maybe this too is asking too much because it requires
the development of both a new O/S and a new "standard"
(and obviously a big porting headache for X11 etc).  Yet
it would be real nice to have a natural Ada API base
on which C programs had to adapt. ;_)

> How long does someone who actually knows Ada (not me) think it
> would take to translate the kernel to Ada?  

I think this process is the wrong way to put something into
Ada. Ada can be made to look like a C program, but I don't
see any benefit to that.

Only by redesign, in Ada terms (not C ones), does such a
project have any useful outcome. For this you toss away
the C code, and design from the requirements.  And what
I am suggesting is that you don't need the Linux kernel
to dictate your requirements.

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