[Info-vax] The (now lost) future of Alpha.

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2018-08-04 00:28, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 8/3/2018 8:32 AM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> We heard that when Ada came out.  While a lot of
>> embedded work moved to Ada C remained a mainstay.
>> I expect the same will be true for other languages.
>> As the amount of embedded increases other languages
>> may make an appearance, but not supplanting C, just
>> in addition to it.
> 
> C will certainly continue to be used.

I agree on that one.

> And to clarify - by "role of C to decline" I only
> meant the percentage of embedded programs in C not the
> number of embedded programs in C.

Also true.

> But embedded with multi core SOC's and hundreds
> of MB of RAM gives more options.

Also true.

> C, C++ or Ada still provide easy HW access and
> good real time characteristics, so they will
> not go away.

I might strongly disagree with this one. With C++, you have no idea what 
happens when you do something in the language, making it horrible for 
figuring out any sort of real time characteristics.

Think classes, inheritance (even multiple inheritance), exceptions and 
so on. You create an objects and you have no idea how much code is 
executed, or how much memory is required. C++ is in general very much 
depending on lots of memory, and a very dynamic memory management model, 
which is horrible if we talk embedded and realtime stuff.

(But yes, I know C++ is being used by some people for those exact 
environments anyway. I can just feel sorry for when, for some surprising 
and unknown reason their devices do not work as expected.)

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
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