4 ms·

I think ada can be good contender for C replacement

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I think Ada's future is in safety-critical systems, where it makes sense to invest heavily in correctness, with the option of using SPARK and formal verification. Additionally, Ada has several mature compilers suitable for life-and-death applications. For more ordinary software though, doesn't Rust make more sense? Its approach to memory management for instance, with a borrower-checker, seems much nicer than what Ada has to offer. Disclaimer: I know neither language very well.
imtringued 6y ago
You need something with traction. How are you going to rally people to use ada? Where is the ada version of Gitoxide?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > You need something with traction No language has traction, until it does. It would be fair to point out though that Ada has had decades to catch on and replace C, but it hasn't done so, except in certain narrow areas of highly critical embedded software development in aviation and military applications. My understanding is that it's not easy to work with for 'general purpose' work (command-line applications on GNU/Linux), as it lacks mature bindings. I think it's fair to say Ada failed to truly embrace Free and Open Source software. A pity, in my opinion.
  - jayp1418 6y ago
    Well they are trying to reach FOSS community. Recently they started survey asking community "Hello here, we (AdaCore) have some plan for the future of GNAT Community that we want to share and have your opinion on: https://forms.gle/Q34myTCQUXvrva5n7 https://forms.gle/Q34myTCQUXvrva5n7 " There is Ravenports very good port manager written in ada for FreeBSD so ada can be used for CLI apps and has good gtk binding too
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      A good sign, see also relevant discussion at [0]. I like the idea of a FORTH target that someone suggested. Are the higher assurance-levels of SPARK going to remain unavailable to FOSS developers, as they apparently are now? [1] [0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/M3yS4STOEBw https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/M3yS4S... [1] https://www.adacore.com/sparkpro https://www.adacore.com/sparkpro
erik_seaberg 6y ago
Doesn't Ada have the same explicit deallocation and use-after-free problems C does?

I think Ada's future is in safety-critical systems, where it makes sense to invest heavily in correctness, with the option of using SPARK and formal verification. Additionally, Ada has several mature compilers suitable for life-and-death applications. For more ordinary software though, doesn't Rust make more sense? Its approach to memory management for instance, with a borrower-checker, seems much nicer than what Ada has to offer. Disclaimer: I know neither language very well.

imtringued 6y ago

You need something with traction. How are you going to rally people to use ada? Where is the ada version of Gitoxide?

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> You need something with traction No language has traction, until it does. It would be fair to point out though that Ada has had decades to catch on and replace C, but it hasn't done so, except in certain narrow areas of highly critical embedded software development in aviation and military applications. My understanding is that it's not easy to work with for 'general purpose' work (command-line applications on GNU/Linux), as it lacks mature bindings. I think it's fair to say Ada failed to truly embrace Free and Open Source software. A pity, in my opinion.
- jayp1418 6y ago
  Well they are trying to reach FOSS community. Recently they started survey asking community "Hello here, we (AdaCore) have some plan for the future of GNAT Community that we want to share and have your opinion on: https://forms.gle/Q34myTCQUXvrva5n7 https://forms.gle/Q34myTCQUXvrva5n7 " There is Ravenports very good port manager written in ada for FreeBSD so ada can be used for CLI apps and has good gtk binding too
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    A good sign, see also relevant discussion at [0]. I like the idea of a FORTH target that someone suggested. Are the higher assurance-levels of SPARK going to remain unavailable to FOSS developers, as they apparently are now? [1] [0] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/M3yS4STOEBw https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/M3yS4S... [1] https://www.adacore.com/sparkpro https://www.adacore.com/sparkpro

erik_seaberg 6y ago

Doesn't Ada have the same explicit deallocation and use-after-free problems C does?