RHARWOOD@EAST.Pima.edu (Ray Harwood) (01/05/91)
Paul Raulerson and Terry Westley each wrote regarding Meridian's Macintosh Ada compiler. Paul was particularly ired with the sample programs accompanying the compiler. The unchecked conversions mentioned are a fact of life when you are overlaying an Ada program on top of an existing "data dictionary". To make MacAda look like MacPascal, you have to "convince" the compiler to accept one type when another type actually describes the structure involved. I would only make one minor change, and that would be to call the unchecked_conversion instantiations simply TO_ADDR or TO_HANDLE, for example. The programmer shouldn't have to worry about what the actual type in use is, only what the desired TARGET type is. It's a simple change (I did it myself in about 30 seconds). Also, the examples attempt to follow MacPascal examples from existing Mac examples in other documentation sources, and no attempt was made to re-package them into "good Ada". Again, it took me another 30 seconds to lift the unchecked_conversion instantiations into PACKAGE MAC_TYPE_CONVERSIONS (okay, I know I'm a little slow with the editor.) Which brings me to Terry's observation of (lack of) speed on his SE. (Note: Humor follows!) Poor baby! I've been using the Ada compiler on my Mac Plus for over a year now! Imagine waiting 45 minutes after doing an AMAKE on the main procedure after making changes EVERYWHERE! Gee, it would probably only take a VAX 2000 less than... 40 minutes on a 20 node busy cluster. Sorry folks. You want a language compiler that does strong type checking, has multi-tasking constructs, compiles and RUNS fast, gives good error messages, has easy recognition and conversion of vendor-specific data structures, and only costs $9.95 per educational copy, complete with 300 pg. user manual!?!? I'd settle for a room full of experienced assembly programmers with above-average software design skills. Ray Harwood "The views expressed above are probably my own, if I could just figure out what I really mean."