Re: Java as an API (Re: Article on state of graphics drivers on BSDs)

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <511DE71A.9070801%marino.st@localhost>, John Marino  
<netbsd%marino.st@localhost> wrote:
>On 2/15/2013 03:47, Martin wrote:
>> Never heard of Ada (gnat) but will look into it. :)
>>
>
>It's pretty remarkable that you haven't heard of it.  It's been 
>standardized for 3 decades:
>
>1983 ANSI/MIL-STD 1815A (Ada 83)
>1987 ISO-8652:1987 (Ada 83)
>1995 ANSI/ISO-8652:1995  (Ada 95, first ISO object-oriented language)
>2007 ISO/IEC 8652:1995/Amd 1:2007 (Ada 2005)
>2012 ISO/IEC 8652:2012 (Ada 2012)
>
>Even the method to verify the integrity of the compiler is a standard:
>1999 ISO/IEC-18009;1999 (Ada: Conformity assessment of a language processor)
>
>That's why Ada really is the most portable -- The conformity is the 
>compiler is heavily tested on every platform its ported to.  If it 
>passes those tests, the program in question will run on that platform.
>
>This is not a toy language.

I still remember when a friend of mine who I have not seen in years
(Hi R... if you are listening) who was working for a subsidiary of a
large military contractor, was writing a monitoring display windowing
system in Ada (because it was the only language accepted in the
contract), and he used X-Windows as the underlying window system
(because there was no other choice). We used to joke about how an
XBadAtom error would bring the whole system down.

Yes, you can use Ada, and it is portable and well-behaved, but the
whole thing breaks down as you meld it with the rest of the environment,
which is not so much (portable and well-behaved) :-)

christos