billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (11/21/89)
From mjl@cs.rit.edu: > Actually, both Unix and Ada are products of the 1970's. The difference > is that Unix, being primarily of commercial interest, has been able to > evolve, Thus generating the need for the POSIX effort. Ada, on the other hand, standardized itself to start with. Furthermore, its definition was frozen for ten years precisely in order to provide vendors with the ability to amortize their investments over that period of time. Ada has always had its portability, whereas Unix is just now struggling to achieve it. Now that Unix is finally standardizing, work is also in progress (in the IEEE 1003.5 committee) to develop a standardized Ada binding to the IEEE 1003.1 POSIX standard. From AlsyNews, September 1989: Ada applications will have a major portability advantage over C applications because Ada's strong typing will assure that an application accesses only the services that are in the POSIX packages. A C application might inadvertently mix portable POSIX services with non-portable services provided by the local operating system. A full IEEE ballot on the Ada binding to POSIX is expected by year-end. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (11/21/89)
From billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu: > Ada has always had its portability, > whereas Unix is just now struggling to achieve it. Consider also this quote from last Wednesday's Wall Street Journal: Currently, about 9% of the world's computers run Unix. It was feared that the computer industry's inability to agree on a single version of Unix would slow its spread. But because there is now a potential standard version of Unix, the operating system's popularity is expected to surge. Analysts estimate that more than a quarter of the computer systems will run Unix by 1993. "Having a clear common [standard] will encourage the perception that Unix is a mainstream product," said Eric Schmidt, vice president of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s general systems group. Contrary to what some Usenetters seem to think, Unix is by no means universal; it is only recently discovering the need to impose the discipline of standardization, so that it might seek more than its present single-digit level of market share. Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu