[Ann] Ada on the 2004 Libre Software Meeting

Ludovic Brenta

2004-07-09 17:23:11 UTC

Post by Lionel Draghi
The 5th edition of the Libre Software Meeting
(http://lsm2004.abul.org/rubrique2.html) will take place from the 6th
to the 10th of July 2004 on Bordeaux (France).
Within the technical topic "Very-high level programming languages for
writing applications" (http://lsm2004.abul.org/article17.html),
Ada-France organize the Ada presentation the 8th of july.
Those presentations will demonstrate not only how well suited is the
language for free software development, but also how easy it is to
install and learn.
* 13h, /Lionel Draghi/ : openning
* 13h10, /Ludovic Brenta/ : langage overview
* 14h05, /Jean-Pierre Rosen/ (Adalog <http://www.adalog.fr/>) : Ada,
a language of choice for free software
AdaCore role in GNAT use for free software
* 15h20, /Samuel Tardieu/ : Ada open language : using Ada with other
languages such as Forth, Erlang, etc.
PolyOrb <http://libre.act-europe.fr/polyorb/>, the schizophrenic
middleware, an innovative research project developed in Ada 95,
now industrialized, free software from the earliest stages of its
development.
o Introducing AIDE (Ada Instant Development Environment), all
Ada for Windows ready to run on a CD
o Martin and Xavier (13 years both) will explain us how they
learn programming in Ada with AIDE
* 17h30, /Ludovic Brenta/ : Ada within Debian
More details (in French) on the Ada-France web site
http://www.ada-france.org/article111.html
(The site is down right now, but will be back soon)

Here is my report from the event; I arrived back in Brussels yesterday
at midnight.

The Libre software meeting went as planned. There were maybe 1000
persons overall. There were a dozen booths from several associations
and free software projects. On Thursday afternoon, attendants could
choose between 11 conferences on various themes, or joining any one of
14 small rooms where informal discussions were being held, or software
being developed. Richard M. Stallman was present and, as usual,
delivered his speech about how bad software patents are, and he was of
course surrounded by a swarm of admirers.

Anyway, at 13:00 there were about 30 people in the auditorium, not
counting the speakers. The presentations turned out to be a 6-hour
marathon, packed with really interesting stuff. At the end there were
sill 2 people in the audience, who had stayed the whole time and
looked very serious about learning Ada.

As an introduction to my speech about Ada, I showed off a picture of
the C-130J cockpit filled with state-of-the art avionics, and this
immediately captivated the audience. After my speech, I passed around
the dozen or so brochures I'd brought from Barco Avionics. They also
made quite a strong impression on the audience, and none remained in
the room at the end of the day. I should have brought twice as many
brochures.

I was most impressed by two 13-year-old youths who started learning
programming in February this year, and are already Ada die-hards after
playing with Python for a while, and also looking at Lisp, C and Java.
They understand that Ada is not a fashionable language but still
prefer using a good language than a fashionable one. Even more
stunning, they even prefer using Emacs instead of more graphical IDEs
such as GPS! They've written a 2000-line text-mode application in Ada
that allows them to draw pictures using ASCII block characters, save
them into text files, read back and display them. They designed the
file format themselves, and it turns out it is quite similar to XPM.
They have a second application that uses these files to display a
"Start" menu with a number of applets, one of which is a fully working
calculator. The father of one of these youths, Stéphane Rivière of
AIDE fame, taught them the basics of Ada during 45-minute courses on
Sundays, and they did all the rest by themselves with very little
supervision. After only 4 months since their first exposure to
programming, they understand and routinely use separate compilation
and encapsulation, and were asking me questions about multitasking and
game programming in Ada!

My conclusions about the event:

- I was thrilled to meet some prominent Ada people whom I knew only by
email. Lionel Draghi, Samuel Tardieu, Jeanp-Pierre Rosen, Thomas
Quinot and Stéphane Rivière and his "MX" team: thank you!

- I was also thrilled to meet people I'd never heard of before, but
who were appreciative and said so.

- The audience was small but we definitely carried our point across
("use Ada"). I'm pretty sure we made at least two converts, and
probably more who remained silent or left before the end of the
6-hour "marathon".

- Areas for improvement include better posters and signs directing
people to the auditorium; better speaker discipline (some speeches
went overtime); and more time dedicated to questions and answers.

- There is so much we can say about Ada and free Ada software that we
really have to make difficult choices in the topics we discuss, or
else increase the length of time allocated to speeches.

This weekend, I will convert my slides to PDF and post them on the
Libre Software Meeting web site[1]. They will also be mirrored on the
Ada-France[2] web site, and probably on other sites as well. Good
news is I now have them in both French and English versions; they may
and will of course be reused in future events. To encourage this, I
will license them under the GPL.

The next big event will be the FOSDEM[3], held in Brussels every year
in February. The dates for 2005 have not been published yet, but I
expect that it will take place during the weekend of 25-26 February
2005, take or leave a week. I plan to organise a similar session
about Ada as part of this event. In the past two years when I
attended this event, the audience was in the range of 3000 to 5000
developers, geeks, enthusiasts, and members of academia.

If anyone is willing to give a speech at the FOSDEM, please contact
me.

[1] http://libresoftwaremeeting.org
[2] http://www.ada-france.org
[3] FOSDEM, Free and Open-Source Developers' Meeting, http://www.fosdem.org

--
Ludovic Brenta.