The Java language for World-Wide Web (WWW, "Web") programming, a "cleaned-up" variant of C++, is currently receiving great amounts of publicity. It compiles to an executable byte-code that is run interpretively, making it object-code portable to any platform having an interpreter. The primary use is to download logic embedded in Web pages, allowing them to have animated images, automatic playing of digitized audio and video, syntactic checking of forms entries, interactive games, and other actions.Intermetrics is in the final testing phase for an Ada 95 compiler called AppletMagic™ that targets the same executable byte-codes and run-time environment as Java. Given the superior features and greater maturity of Ada and the compiler-writing expertise of Intermetrics, this represents an extraordinary opportunity to expand the use of Ada to a much wider programming community. This paper summarizes the underlying technology, reviews the history and characteristics of Java, compares Java, C++, and Ada, and finally discusses efforts to promote the use of Ada for Web programming.
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