Re: The future of Ada is at risk
- From: anon@xxxxxxxx (anon)
- Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2007 16:24:54 GMT
In <20071229040639.f753f982.coolzone@xxxxx>, Rico Secada <coolzone@xxxxx> writes:
I have been doing a lot of research about the usage of Ada, both in
industry and in the Open Source community. I am possible writing a paper
on the issue and needs some constructive criticism.
I have reached the following conclusions:
1. Many companies are moving away from Ada towards C/C++. Many has
already moved during the past 10 years.
1. Most companies left in 1998 when the DOD killed the "Ada Law".
2. Very few projects exists on Sourceforge and Freshmeat compared to
other languages like C++, Java, Python and others.
Only 92 projects on Sourceforge.net and 57 on Freshmeat.net.
2. Most Ada projects are not for open source community and will
never be archive at any open source archiving site, such
as sourceforge, etc.
3. This is the biggest problem: Ada lacks free support on all
platforms. The GNU GNAT Compiler is the only Open Source compiler, and
it lacks proper support and implementation on a variety of platforms.
3. In this answer you need to spend more time doing research.
Free support is always limited! And Adacore's GNAT is only Ada
that is implementation on most platforms and the number is
growing every day. Not sure what you mean by proper support but
if your talking about vendor (Adacore) support. You can pay for
it just like other languages. You may hate the price but it
does exist.
The different GNU/Linux implementations of GNAT and the different BSD
implementations seems to miss different aspects making it impossible to
port larger projects without having to buy a proprietary compiler.
My study shows, from searching around different mailing list archives
on GNU/Linux and BSD, that people are very attracted towards Ada, but
because of a poor implementation on different platforms when compared
to C and C++ people stay away and focus on those languages instead.
Problems with GNU GNAT and platform independence seems to be the one
major reason why Ada isn't a moving target.
I would like your comments on this please!
Best regards.
Rico Secada.
First you need to learn about why Ada was created. Ada was
created for "High Integrity" and "True Portability" type of
applications. Most programmers believe at the movement that most
projects do not need that level of integrity. Now this is a
falsehood, but until most programmer realize this Ada will not move
in it current level of usage. And when using the standard Ada
libraries (Ada) the program is 100% portable without modification.
The problem with OpenBSD is that it is designed for
security. Which means that there are fewer application that can be
ported with full functionality. Even though OpenBSD was initially
based FreeBSD it has become quite distinct. So, in porting an
application from FreeBSD or other BSD's to OpenBSD it can be a pain
because of its use of security and distinctive design.
Plus, open source programming developers do not need or want
high security developmental system limiting them from creating
programs and projects just because it might violate the security on
the programmer's workstation. They need a more relax security
workstation and then add the level of security as needed for the
project.
That means that OpenBSD is limited in its scope of
application and to be use of a platform for programming
development.
Now for Ada. Most programmer use a Desktop that they like
to write the code and perform primary debugging. Such as FreeBSD,
Linux, Vista and others Desktop. Then they move the code to the
core platform and complete the debugging and optimization phase.
This save time and money. Plus, sometime a programmer may not have
access to the core platform until the end of the development cycle.
Free Support! That's a Myth! Especially in Open Source!
Normally free support is limited to a few weeks to a few months
(90 days in some cases). As for Adacore, you can get a yearly
support but you pay a high price for it and you may not need it.
But for normal support. You need to study the life cycle of
a program and compiler. You will find out that the vendors of the
language compiler have limited free support and have little to no
support for a project. And they only port their compilers to a
limited number of hardware platforms. Such as IBM which only
supports hardware and platform it has developed. It is up to the
project developers and programmers to provide the true support.
In an examples of a traffic light system, Adacore or any or Ada
vendor is not responsible for support. The support is provide by
two main sources: first the manufacturer of the traffic light
controller and second the software team that wrote the
controller's software.
Looks to me that you need to do a lot more research before wrtting
your paper.
.
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