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From: "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>
Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...
Date: 1996/07/23
Message-ID: <01bb78b1$28455ec0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>#1/1
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Date: 1996-07-23T00:00:00+00:00
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Robert Dewar <dewar@cs.nyu.edu> wrote in article
<dewar.838069989@schonberg>...
> Kevin said
> 
> "Let me back off one thing, though.  I don't mean to say that C is
"superior"
> to ADA; I'd have to be an expert at both, not just one to actually have
an
> opinion.  What I mean is that I like C, and I don't like ADA; so for me,
C is
> "better"."
> 
> Yes, but you don't know Ada (not even how to spell the name of the
language!)
> as has been clear from your previous posts. You probably also don't like
> COBOL and know nothing about it.
> 
> It would be one thing to say "I know and like C, and I don't know Ada, so
> for me, C is 'better'", but I think it is safer not to take a dislike
> to languages you don't know (althought that certainly is common -- hands
> up now all those who are sure they don't like COBOL without knowing
> a thing about it :-)

I am totally ignorant of Ada, except for a book I flipped through a
long time ago.  I use C, because it has the most infrastructure along
with it, including programming talent.  I'm in business to make money,
not to push back the frontiers of computer science (the pioneers take
the arrows).

My personal preference is for small nuts-and-bolts languages, anyway.
Ada always seemed too "kitchen sink" for my tastes.

My question is this, and I really don't mean this snidely: If Ada is so
good, why are the only companies that use it are the ones that deal with
the government, which make them use it?  Ada has had plenty of time to
develop the infrastructure that C has developed, so it can't be a "I
don't want to be first" mentality on the part of industry.

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)