Re: is it possible to install a desktop-manager without python and perl?
On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 09:49:26PM -0500, Cybe R. Wizard wrote:
> Although there have been attempts to design one "universal"
> computer language that serves all purposes, all of them have failed to
> be generally accepted as filling this role.
Ada does a good job. Except that since no OS is written in it, to get
OS system calls, you have to use the underlying system libraries, which
are usually in C. This is simple in Ada, but its still mixed-language.
Of course, if you care to, even on i386 I guess you could start from
scratch and build an embedded system without an underlying OS, all in
Ada. However, there would be little point.
On the other hand, if you're designing a new air traffic control system
for a country (e.g. Canada), you write it in Ada from scratch with no
underlying OS, no other libraries. Ditto if you're building a new
fly-by-wire system for an airliner.
The US military, before they decided to go C.O.T.S. specified Ada for
everything. They wanted one language that could do everything, and they
got it. The problem for the rest of us is that people were already
comfortable with all the rules that they could break with C. For a
commercial company that earns money fixing its own bugs, it doesn't make
commercial sense to retrain everyone in Ada and retool in Ada, only to
inadvertanly write software with fewer bugs (and what bugs there are,
easier to fix).
Doug.
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