Just as a matter of interest really.

If you're using it on a MIPS device I'd be even more interested :-)

Thanks
John

On Apr 30, 9:19*am, John McCabe <j...@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk> wrote:
If you don't get much back on this group the comp.lang.ada people
should be happy to give you their experiences. I'd like the chance to
use Ada in an embedded project - the tasking is really appealing,
among other attractions. Maybe someday when C and associated
languages are finally outlawed by enlightened societies as the hazards
to life and limb that they are...

In message <k1fg141g01d2gld0oferfi9riuu942ar1t@4ax.com>, John McCabe
<john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk> writes
It's a trap... when you identify yourselves they are going to come
around and forcibly convert you to the One True Language of FORTH!!!
:-)))))



--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

In message
<9fb2b6e2-be85-4b86-a46a-9c479903f12d@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com>, Mike
Silva <snarflemike@yahoo.com> writes

The use of C on safety related projects is increasing whist the use of
Ada is decreasing.

However, it is the process that is more important than the language.


--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

On Apr 30, 10:40*am, Chris H <ch...@phaedsys.org> wrote:
I know, and IMO that's a sign that the inmates are running the
asylum. Or, to quote one author (http://brinch-hansen.net/papers/
1999b.pdf)

"The 1980s will probably be remembered as the decade in which
programmers took a gigantic step backwards by switching from
secure Pascal-like languages to insecure C-like languages. I have
no rational explanation for this trend."

As for process vs. language, it's not an either-or situation. Use the
right process AND the right language.

Mike

On Apr 30, 9:40*am, Chris H <ch...@phaedsys.org> wrote:
My impression it that that the number of projects with an interest in
safety and/or security is increasing. Both Ada and C are used, and
there seems to be recently increasing interest in Ada, reversing the
trend of the last decade. The thing the holds Ada back in the low-end
microcontroller space (e.g. PIC, AVR, MIPS, etc) is the lack of
readily available cross-compilers for these targets. This is
absolutely not due to any technical aspects of the language but just
reflects the market factors of the last several years.

Ada can be (and is) used without a "runtime", or with a minimal
runtime, depending on what the application requires.

Process is more important than language, but choosing a better
language makes it much easier to implement and adhere to a safety/
security focused process.

- Britt

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:22:36 -0700 (PDT), Mike Silva
<snarflemike@yahoo.com> wrote:

Thanks for that, but I keep an eye on that group anyway.

LOL!!

I'm using C++ at the moment - it's not that I don't like it or
anything like that, but I'm sure the system I'm working on would be
much better in terms of reliability and maintainability if it was in
Ada!

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:28:04 +0100, Chris H <chris@phaedsys.org>
wrote:

Rubbish - the one true language was occam-2!!

In message <je6h141a4at6nbdtu691u9uohuru7q9sbo@4ax.com>, John McCabe
<john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk> writes
Only if you are running it on Transputers.

BTW the new thing is multi core and parallisum..... Maybe Occam's time
has come?
--
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 15:28:04 +0100, Chris H <chris@phaedsys.org>
wrote:

And?

No I'm not going to do that, despite having several clients who
ship safety critical apps written in Forth, and despite having
tools to generate FDA (the US Food and Drug Administration)
quality documentation directly from Forth source code, and ...

As people have said elsewhere, the process really matters
more than the programming language.

Actually, I believe that the single thing that will improve
code most is to teach people *how* to debug. The process
is just formal scientific method. The second most inportant
change is to fix bugs before you do anything else. The third
is probably to use something like literate programming as
part of writing the code - it has greatly improved our code
quality, and almost always reveals bugs when we add it to
incoming third-party code.

Stephen


--
Stephen Pelc, stephenXXX@mpeforth.com
MicroProcessor Engineering Ltd - More Real, Less Time
133 Hill Lane, Southampton SO15 5AF, England
tel: +44 (0)23 8063 1441, fax: +44 (0)23 8033 9691
web: http://www.mpeforth.com - free VFX Forth downloads

Have you seen any hardware device drivers in Pascal, before or after
1980?

John McCabe wrote:
Yes. Using Ada and yes using MIPS.

On 30/04/2008 17:19, in article Et6X9XbkwJGIFAJM@phaedsys.demon.co.uk,
"Chris H" <chris@phaedsys.org> wrote:

No - Ada handles that very nicely indeed.
Better than any other major language, in fact,
and MUCH better than occam could possibly do.
--
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk

On 30/04/2008 17:20, in article
125abc62-7cc7-4e73-9bcb-f329275865dc...oglegroups.com, "linnix"
<me@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:

How many programmers need to write device drivers?

But, as it happens, yes, I have.
In fact, I wrote some (around 1974).

BTW, the quote says "Pascal-like", which includes Ada (now Ada 2005),
in which writing close-to-hardware code is a snap.

--
Bill Findlay
<surname><forename> chez blueyonder.co.uk

In article <d81b23ff-d760-477f-8281-a7991ea83fd9@l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com>, britt.snodgrass@gmail.com writes:
There is a port of GNAT to the AVR platform, but it's a community driven,
instead of ACT driven, port.

Note that when I last looked at it, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't
yet quite comfortable using it on a project that I was working on, as I
wanted to see it have a bit more of a development history before using it
on this particular project.

I don't have any information on what functionality it has these days.

See here for the port:

http://avr-ada.sourceforge.net

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980's technology to a 21st century world

On 30 Apr, 18:15, Jeffrey Creem <j...@thecreems.com> wrote:
I have built GNAT to compile for MIPS also, but no runtime - this was
for base hardware access on SGI machines. Did you port the runtime?

Thanks,
Luke.

On Apr 30, 12:20*pm, linnix <m...@linnix.info-for.us> wrote:
Are you just pointing out that C is the language of choice for device
drivers? I won't argue with you about that. But if you're suggesting
other languages aren't suitable, or couldn't be made suitable, that
isn't true at all. C hit a sweet spot, no question about that. But
it's not irreplaceable.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:20:23 -0400, <britt.snodgrass@gmail.com> wrote:

Ada's and SPARK's support for the overall process is exactly why Sutton
and Middleton recommend these languages in their book "Lean Software
Development". They don't consider the languages' technical merits, though
substantial, as important as their contributions at the very different
level of process support.

In article <C43E77DC.E7692%yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk>,
yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk says...
type of supporting OS, we HAVE to write "device drivers" for all the
hardware we use. Like UARTs, I2C, SPI, and so on. Many of us have
built up a library of standard routines that we use on particular
processors, but we had to write the original code, none the less.

Jim

On Wed, 30 Apr 2008 12:20:49 -0400, Stephen Pelc <stephenXXX@mpeforth.com>
wrote:

Teaching people to avoid writing buggy code in the first place is more
important. But hell, that contention goes back to Fred Brooks in the
60's. Too much time is spent in the debugger, and too much emphasis is
put on it. Thinking is the best way to travel.