[Info-vax] Safer programming languages (and walking :-) ), was: Re: 8-bit characters

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 11/15/21 2:45 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 11/15/2021 1:34 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2021-11-14, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 11/14/2021 6:43 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>>> On 11/14/21 5:05 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>>> There is a move towards more safe languages for systems programming.
>>>>>
>>>>> The current fashion, Rust, has horrible syntax, and I have no 
>>>>> confidence
>>>>> that code written in it today will still compile on the Rust compilers
>>>>> of 5 to 10 years from now, but its use is being driven by the desire
>>>>> for using safer languages.
>>>>>
>>>>> When Rust falls out of fashion, it would be nice if whatever follows
>>>>> Rust would address both of those problems.
>>>>
>>>> I thought this is the problem Ada was created to fix?  :-)
>>>
>>> It was.
>>>
>>> But Ada did fall out of fashion.
>>>
>>> There are probably many explanations for that, but my guess
>>> is that the complexity of the language turned out to be a
>>> problem.
>>
>> There's also the problem that the Ada compiler situation overall is not
>> good and that Adacore's Community Edition version of GNAT is pure GPL
>> with no runtime exception. See https://www.adacore.com/community for
>> details.
> 
> I know about that restriction. It has been discussed before.
> 
> If they really wanted it then they would pay ACT for the commercial 
> edition.
> 
>  > There's still the FSF distribution of GNAT (at least for the targets
>  > it supports) however.
> 
> Unfortunately then most GCC dists does not include gnat.
> 
> Supposedly m2 is going to be in standard GCC dist going forward,
> so maybe Modula-2 instead of Ada??
> 

But, sadly, Modula was intended for applications and not systems
programming.  I seriously doubt you could write a functional OS
beyond the most simplistic in Modula.

bill