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"Paul D. Stachour" <[log in to unmask]>
Fri, 2 May 1997 06:04:27 -0500
text/plain (37 lines)
>
> Hi there!  :)
>
> I am finishing my degree in CS and I am required to take a programming
> class that uses Ada as it's language. I am curious... (already went to
Small comment:  Think you mean the possessive: its
> the AdaHome, set up a PC with Linux/Ada, starting to go thru the
> tutorials...) Is Ada a language suitable for 2d, 3d graphics, modeling,
> animation apps? Or is it mostly apps suitable for an office type
> environment and it's applications?
> ...
> Sybelle Rodriguez
Dear Sybelle,
  In my experience, Ada is best suited for applications where
security, reliability, human life, and correctness are a concern.  That is,
Operating Systems, Nuclear Power Plants, Space Shuttle, Airplane navigation
systems, railroad track switching systems, Air Route Traffic Control
Systems, heart pacemakers, etc.

  That is not to say that such are the only uses for Ada.  Any place where
one might use a systems implementation language like C or PL/S, Ada will
do better in correctness, easy of use, and efficiency.  Any place where
you need to get correct answers for currency, such as 12.34, where one
needs to use either DECIMAL radix or fixed-point  (COBOL has both;
C has neither).  Anyplace where you need to do more than one thing
at a time (like ask a user a question while you program continues to
run in the background) and concurrency is needed (Most programming
languages restrict you to one-thing at a time).  Anyplace where you
need to setup an abstraction (like a set of routines that draws on
a window) and want to ensure that other items do not use the low-level
primitive directly; thus you need to hide them.


I hope that this is helpful.

Paul Stachour.

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