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Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

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Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#81

Post by touisteur »

ajxs wrote: post #41
eschaton wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean that they can’t get past the fact that it looks more like Algol or Pascal than C. Which is, frankly, a pretty silly argument. I’ve heard this exact argument about VHDL versus Verilog, with the former being explicitly based on Ada’s syntax and the latter being explicitly based on C’s. (Turns out though that VHDL is also strictly better than at least traditional Verilog, as it requires separate inter…

I like your use of "Ada: The Next Generation". I replied to your comment in GP. I'm not really too hung up on the Pascal-ish syntax. I don't think these things matter too much. If I had to design the syntax myself, I'd probably go in a different direction. That's just my own opinion though.

Modern Ada 2012 is full of parentheses now. if-, case-expressions, expression-functions, and recently raise-expressions, quantifiers-everything, delta-aggregates, the thing looks more and more like my olden ocaml code. In a good way.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#82

Post by touisteur »

tomcam wrote: post #74
BirAdam wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ada job market is still large in aerospace and defense industries where lives are on the line.

When you say large, what do you guess in actual numbers? Just a rough impression; I'm not going to hold you to anything.

Probably a thousand max in France? extrapolating from the ones I know, if you're talking defense/aeronautics (but I don't know or see everyone). Someone from AdaCore would give a better approximate.

We (embedded company) don't hire specifically with Ada experience (it's welcome but not mandatory) we just train people and then focus on shipping stuff.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#83

Post by mkovach »

touisteur wrote: post #80
mkovach wrote: post #40

Ahh, Lovely Ada. When I was a wee lad, toiling as an Email consultant, having my mind slowly destroyed by Sendmail configurations, the constant fear induced by anything related to Microsoft and Email, and, well, let's not mention Lotus Notes, some wounds never heal, I had the grand idea of writing a secure collection of Email tools. This included SMTP, IMAP, POP3 daemons, and various other tools. I was going to write…

Look up Ada Web Server :-) no IMAP though. And no QUIC yet, sadly. I hope someone is going to write a whole HTTPS stack using RecordFlux. One can dream.

I have actually looked at it, in my endless quest to stop having Naviserver/AOLserver be my favorite web server. ;->

I'm going to be giving it another go here in a bit, I got a small little personal project where I'm going to make a serious attempt to curse at it for a bit.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#84

Post by touisteur »

mkovach wrote: post #83
touisteur wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up Ada Web Server :-) no IMAP though. And no QUIC yet, sadly. I hope someone is going to write a whole HTTPS stack using RecordFlux. One can dream.

I have actually looked at it, in my endless quest to stop having Naviserver/AOLserver be my favorite web server. ;-> I'm going to be giving it another go here in a bit, I got a small little personal project where I'm going to make a serious attempt to curse at it for a bit.

I'm actually curious whether someone has formalized message formats/grammar, protocol specs (state management, timing specs,...) for QUIC or IMAP, in some parseable form other than free-form text.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#85

Post by goku12 »

dilawar wrote: post #6
gscho wrote: post #2

Back in university I took a course in legacy programming. We did a project in each of Fortran, COBOL and Ada. I enjoyed Ada very much. The module system made a lot of sense to me and the compiler found a lot of mistakes (compared to C). Thanks for sharing this article. It brought me back and makes me want to give Ada another go now that I have 10 years of real world experience.

I had a digital design course. The instructor hated verilog and preferred VHDL for reason that didn't make much sense to me those days. There was only one VHDL compiler available that time called ghdl which worked fine for course. There was modelsim as well but one had to go to the lab. Later I learnt that VHDL is related to ADA. I've been itching to try it for a long while. Might give it a try this week. Currently I…

I haven't tried Ada yet, but do have experience with VHDL. It's the most modular language I've encountered. It's easy to work with big teams in VHDL. Choose everyone's responsibility, design the interfaces (entities) and have a brief discussion on it. Then go separate ways and implement your parts (architecture). They all finally fit together like magic without needing too much coordination or interaction between the team members. I'm pretty sure that's what's great about Ada too. However, I still don't understand what it is about the language's design that makes this possible.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#86

Post by goku12 »

tombert wrote: post #8

I've never used Ada, and I also don't really do systems stuff, but it does seem like it's a pretty neat language, at least compared to C. From what I have seen, it looks like it has better memory guarantees while still being fast and low-level. With be the popularity of Rust, it makes me kind of wonder why Ada isn't more popular. I should give the language a go.

> With be the popularity of Rust, it makes me kind of wonder why Ada isn't more popular.

It looks like Ada is having a resurgence due to Rust. I see Ada being pushed alongside Rust in a lot of places that emphasize safety.

Re: Writing Linux Modules in Ada (2016)

#87

Post by binary132 »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #45
binary132 wrote: post #43

I’ve always been attracted to the idea of Ada (particularly SPARK) as a “really safe C-like”. I guess my main concern versus C is portability and ease of integrating libraries or exporting a usable C API, and secondarily the quality of the optimizer.

>> I guess my main concern versus C is portability and ease of integrating libraries or exporting a usable C API, and secondarily the quality of the optimizer. Interfacing with C APIs / libraries is really easy and portable across Ada implementations: https://learn.adacore.com/courses/intro-to-ada/chapters/inte... http://www.ada-auth.org/standards/22rm/html/RM-B-3.html The quality of the optimizer depends on the Ada…

Thanks for showing me that, I agree it looks pretty convenient.
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