Re: ANSI C and POSIX (was Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada)

[KMays@msn.com (Kenneth Mays)]

>Of course, you can't really assign blame to any of these abstract
>entities; blame, if it is to be assigned, must be assigned to the
>people responsible.  But you can't blame any of the people involved too
>much.  You can't really blame the language designers or language
>committee much; after all, they were just doing their best to specify
>the language in a way which allowed implementations some flexibility.
>You can't really blame the implementors, even though they may have
>known that defining things the way they did might lead to portability
>problems; after all, they were only following the spec!  And you can't
>really blame the programmers too much for making the occasional
>mistake; after all, they are only human!!

Interesting point. The C language still falls under Objective C, ANSI C, or
some other variant - instead of just C. You have OWL and MFC libraries for
MSDOS-based machines, and specialized libraries for SGI/Sun/Cray platforms.
You can say its the language designers, and/or the language implementors,
which is why I spoke of standardization of the base module of Ada95. 
Are we going to have Objective-Ada95, Ada95 V2.0, or whatever?

You want to blame the programmers? Well I do believe that many 
programmers are young (or old) hackers or college graduates just 
starting out in the professional field. Hell, I just got through 
reading about DB/2 V3 when most businesses are still using V2.x!!! I 
could go into MicroFocus Visual COBOL
issues but the point is that we are working with some of the new 
tools and those tools aren't always perfect. Technology is moving so 
fast that what you learn in a college class today might change before 
the week is over. There are so many patches, updates, fixes, and 
workarounds that either you are in the business (an MIS) of keeping 
up with the latest hacks or your company is left behind in the 
whirlwind. Programmers have a hard enough time trying to program 
besides doing multirole jobs in certain organizations. Blame it on 
the managers who push software engineers and programmers to release 
their software NOW, instead of next week (I don't blame everything on 
managers either).  

--> But when it comes to Ada95, the USAF and other agencies are depending
a validated programming language that it can trust enough to put in those
embedded systems - and get some good results from it. Many accidents are
caused by bad programming habits or miscommunication between the programmer
and system analyst/project manager - not so much the programming language.
Even with C, there are many shortcuts and workarounds to do the same 
thing more efficiently and effectively - without garbage collection 
and with good error handling. Teach our programmers good programming 
habits and teach the managers how to understand good language design 
and analysis. I could say more but I'll leave it at that.

Ken Mays, MIS, USAF
http://www.wg53.eglin.af.mil (Webmaster)

"The pursuit of excellence is a lethal habit - when you inject it into the
 minds of the incompetent."

"That's mot a bug, that's a convertible!"