David and all,

With all the news about virus problems - and to the best of my knowledge
(admittedly small) about them they are mostly variations on a theme of
overwriting buffers - an operating system or web browser that proved to be
immune to that sort of thing could go a long way toward getting Ada into the
mainstream of software development where it belongs.

Bob

David C. Hoos, Sr. wrote:

> When I responded to Nick, I forgot to include the rest of Team Ada.  Sorry.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David C. Hoos, Sr. <[log in to unmask]>
> To: Nick Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 2:06 PM
> Subject: Re: "OS in Ada" project promoting Ada
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Nick Roberts <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Thursday, November 18, 1999 11:49 AM
> > Subject: "OS in Ada" project promoting Ada
> >
> >
> > > Some of you may be aware that some volunteers and I have initiated a
> > > project, called "AdaOS" at the moment, to build a complete operating
> > > system written (mainly) in Ada. The URL is at the bottom of this
> > > message.
> > >
> > > Please find below an extract from my latest post to the AdaOS project
> > > 'chat' page.
> > >
> > <large snip>
> > >
> > > I would appreciate advice about how best to make this project serve the
> > > interests of the Ada community, and to promote the language, and, I
> > > suppose, the philosophy of good software engineering that lies behind
> > > the language.
> > >
> > Just a personal opinion, Nick (aren't all opinions personal?), but I think
> > the
> > interests of the Ada community are best served by writing "some fairly
> > serious
> > application software in Ada" (to plagiarize a phrase) that demonstrates
> the
> > reliability, portability, ease of interfacing to other languages, better
> > abstraction,
> > etc., etc., of Ada, and have that application run on several widely-used
> > OSs.
> >
> > Methinks trying to popularize a fairly unpopular language, and get people
> to
> > step up to a new OS with few applications would not only be infinitely
> more
> > difficult, but much less likely to succeed.
> >
> > Respectfully,
> >
> > David C. Hoos, Sr.
> >
> > with
> >



--
                               Robert L. Spooner
                         Registered Professional Engineer
                               Research Assistant
                         Intelligent Control Systems Group

            Applied Research Laboratory        Phone: (814) 863-4120
            The Pennsylvania State University  FAX:   (814) 863-7841
            P. O. Box 30
            State College, PA 16804-0030       [log in to unmask]