Advice on selling Ada to a C shop
in [ADA]
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From: Adam Beneschan on 24 Jun 2010 18:18 On Jun 24, 10:25 am, a...(a)att.net wrote: > From a Read Only web site: > > "Ada - The Project The DoD High Order Language Working Group" > William A. Whitaker, Colonel USAF, Retired > PO Box 3036, McLean VA 22103 > > Typo in the quoted work come from the document. > > "Without exception, the following languages were found by the > evaluators to be inappropriate to serve as base languages for a > development of the common language: FORTRAN, COBOL, TACPOL, CMS-2, > JOVIAL J-73, JOVIAL J-3B, SIMULA 67, ALGOL 60, and CORAL 66." > > That statement alone shows that Algol had no influence on the design > of common language (later named Ada). I don't know what the heck brought all this on. However: (1) it is indisputable that Pascal was a major influence on Ada; (2) the Wikipedia entry for Pascal says, right up front, "Pascal is based on the ALGOL programming language"; (3) the post in this thread that you're apparently responding to referred to Algol as a "direct ancestor" of Ada---not as a "parent" of Ada. So you've taken a whole lot of space attempting to debunk something that nobody said. That's all I'm going to say on the subject. -- Adam
From: Marco on 25 Jun 2010 13:34 On Jun 21, 7:23 am, Warren <ve3...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > But I think one practical selling point, to achieve a > "comfort level", is to show them examples of how Ada can > interface with C. This way, whether they actually > need to call C routines or not, they will have the comfort > of knowing that they can, with little difficulty. Hopefully this won't sound like heresy to Ada folks. May I suggest you start your design in Ada. Start with Ada as the programming-in-the-large model and show how you can easily reuse existing C functions when necessary or have some components developed in C for those not willing to learn a new language. Finding inexpensive Ada combined with C cross-compilers for certain CPU targets may be an issue.
From: Warren on 28 Jun 2010 09:22 Marco expounded in news:aedaa685-813d-4f46-8ad3- 3a42affa14df(a)q12g2000yqj.googlegroups.com: > On Jun 21, 7:23�am, Warren <ve3...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> But I think one practical selling point, to achieve a >> "comfort level", is to show them examples of how Ada can >> interface with C. �This way, whether they actually >> need to call C routines or not, they will have the comfort >> of knowing that they can, with little difficulty. > > Hopefully this won't sound like heresy to Ada folks. > > May I suggest you start your design in Ada. Start with Ada as the > programming-in-the-large model and show how you can easily reuse > existing C functions when necessary or have some components developed > in C for those not willing to learn a new language. > > Finding inexpensive Ada combined with C cross-compilers for certain > CPU targets may be an issue. It's not just that, but in a given company, where many similar projects are done, you may have large bodies of existing library code. It's a tough sell to say "rewrite _everything_ in Ada". Conversely, it's much easier to sell "reuse what we don't want to rewrite at the moment, but let's write the new 'stuff' in Ada". Once everyone get's hooked on that, then other portions can be migrated to Ada over time. With this approach, you can avoid the "aw, it's just too much work(/cost)" objection. Warren
From: Warren on 28 Jun 2010 09:37 BrianG expounded in news:hvu7ap$r2s$1(a)news.eternal-september.org: > Nasser M. Abbasi wrote: >> On 6/20/2010 5:29 PM, Ludovic Brenta wrote: >> >>> Show them that no, C is not "good enough". .... >> Many large applications are written in C all the time, the problem I >> think, is that it takes more skill and effort to produce as reliable >> code in C as with Ada, but it can be done, given more effort, skill, >> time and money, and lots of coffee. >> > Coffee? Coffee? I thought "real coders" always relied on Mt.Dew, or > Jolt. Or today maybe Red Bull, etc. :-) Many of those programmers became diebetics ;-) So coffee is better (black) that way. "Real programmers drink it [coffee] black". Warren
From: Stephen Leake on 29 Jun 2010 04:42
Warren <ve3wwg(a)gmail.com> writes: > ... in a given company, where many > similar projects are done, you may have large bodies > of existing library code. It's a tough sell to say > "rewrite _everything_ in Ada". Yes, that's a non-starter. Be sure to mention GNAT's -fdump-ada-spec, which generates Ada package specs from C code. That makes it _much_ easier to import C correctly. -- -- Stephe |