From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/07/31 Message-ID: <01bb7f22$c997b940$96ee6fcf@timhome2>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171289149 references: <4tk93t$o7a@Masala.CC.UH.EDU> <01bb7e29$61e3d260$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4tmqof$ivt@rational.rational.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c Date: 1996-07-31T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bob Kitzberger wrote in article <4tmqof$ivt@rational.rational.com>... > [snip] > better is not enough. You have to be an order of magnitude or more > better to overcome the inertia. The DOS-->Windows transition > occured when there were far better platforms available (Amiga, > MacOS). The state transition from DOS-->Windows required less > overall energy than a transition from, say DOS-->MacOS, and so > it happened. Success begets success. The transition from C-->C++ > (if it occurs) will be because C++ offers improvements at _apparent_ > low cost vs. a transition from C-->Ada. I agree, but there is precedent for large shifts in development philosophy. Mainframe --> PC. Assembly O/S --> HLL O/S. Proprietary S/W --> Portable S/W. Fortran --> C. Char --> GUI. Now, based on what I've seen so far, we are talking about a shift from "close to the metal" HLLs to "robust, protect people from themselves, put in the investment up front" HLLs (correct me if I wrong in my perception). If that were the case, the question would be... is it worth it? -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)