From: Michael Feldman <mfeldman AT seas DOT gwu DOT edu>
Subject: Re: Ada and djgpp
To: UCKO AT VAX1 DOT ROCKHURST DOT EDU (Aaron Ucko)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 18:19:16 -0500 (EST)
Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu


> Sorry about my reply; I didn't realize that Ada did its own multitasking
> rather than relying on fork() and some form of IPC.  Sounds like a rather
> interesting language, then; perhaps I'll put it on my list of things to
> investigate.

Yeah, tasking was a very important aspect of the language design, and the 
only conceivable way to define it was completely independently of the OS.

Also recall that what we call Ada 83 was actually designed in 1979,
when Unix and C were pretty much just research toys, the Vax was _just_
starting to come off the line, and most folks' idea of a PC was a
TRS-80 or other 8080-based machine. All things considered, trying to
design concurrency into the language was rather audacious. Overall, it's
a successful design, even if in some cases it sidesteps the OS
goodies - it was _precisely_ designed to do just that!

Allow me one more wisecrack - years ago, the C community really dumped 
on Ada 83 for doing exceptions and generic templates, saying it made 
the language and the compiler insufferably complicated. Ten years later, 
of course, we've gone from C -> C++ -> C++ + templates and exceptions.:-)

(No language wars; I just find the irony delicious...)

Let me know, any of you, if I can help.

Mike Feldman