"Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" wrote:
>
> "Robert I. Eachus" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >In fact, I and a lot of other poeple I know have
> >used Ada as a PDL for other languages, especially C.
>
> It is interesting. I thought about this opportunity, but vaguely. Besides of
> (possible) direct usefulness for a program designed, it may create another
> way for introducing Ada into unfriendly environments. For example: while my
> manager insists on C++ against Ada (saying that nobody around knows Ada so
> future maintenance will be too costly), at the same time he will not object
> for use Ada as PDL -- simply because he totally ignores this level (it sounds
> to him like I want to put Lady Ada picture on my desktop). Then (assuming
> some positive results) PDL texts may be used inside the team and some
> understanding of Ada begins to spread.

My first Ada project was using it as a PDL for micro code for a bit
slice computer.  For those of you who don't know about them, back in the
old TTL logic days before CMOS was king.  Many vendors made the basic
math unit and register sets in 4 bit slices.  If you wanted a 16 bit
computer you used 4 of them.  If you wanted a 32 bit computer you used
8.  And so on.  This use of Ada was very successful because it allowed
very good definition of the data though the use of rep specs.  So the
hardware people loved it.  The software people liked it because it allow
us to abstract away those details.

Steve
--
Stephen(Steve) Schwarm
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