Nasser > ... Java has a rich set of APIs that come with the JDK and
       > very good API documentation

Hear Hear!

But beware, most of those APIs do not work (some by design and most by bugs)
on either Netscape, Microsoft Explorer, Mosaic, or Paladin. There is
quite a run-in period for the J 1.1 APIs, for example. Sun is trying
to make plug-ins available for the most common browsers for the Java
Byte Machine with the 1.1 APIs, but it is not all there yet.

Nasser > ... what I think Ada needs is:
       >   - More API's
       >   - more APIs and more APIs.

Hear Hear!


A good question is why, with recent publications of C, C++, Java, and Ada
standards, are the APIs for these languages different? Why, for example,
did they not coordinate and come up with a single API that does the same
things in all languages?

Nasser > ... If I want to find if a file is in a directory, I call a method ...

Yes, the limitations on text_io and lack of directory management was
put in to implement some kind of least common denominator file system
that respected DEC's desire for every user of VMS to go through the
Record Manager. It was a design error for DEC to desire every user of
VMS to go through the Record Manager, and it was a design error for
Ada to attempt to support files that are something other than a bunch
of bytes. URLs were many years old and could have been the basis of
the same directory accessing system that works on the web. That
system has been adapted to every operating system capable of being
put onto a network. Other operating systems could do a very small
translation of the URL format in their native directory system.

Nasser > ... I dont think the Ada to Java hooks will take care of this ...

What hooks are being referred to? The Ada source code does not hook
into Java, it directly converts to Ada byte code.