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: 10db24,4cf070091283b555 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Larry J. Elmore" Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [any language except Ada] Date: 1996/08/23 Message-ID: <01bb9102$1865afa0$506700cf@ljelmore.montana>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 175960324 references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4uo74j$95p@ns.broadvision.com> <01bb8950$2c8dcc60$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <4vephc$8aa@hobyah.cc.uq.oz.au> organization: CampusMCI newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer Date: 1996-08-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: > Bill McKay said > > "A core unit of a post-grad course i'm doing was 100% Ada and 100% waste > of time! A rotten language and only used by the US military - enough > said!" I have to admit that when I was first introduced to Ada 83 one year ago, I was rather disgusted. I felt the language was too big, too complicated, too picky and WAY too verbose. If a camel was a horse designed by a committee, I felt Ada was a Pascal designed by a government committee. As I used it more and more, and learned more of its features, I gradually began to grudgingly respect it. Then I got GNAT Ada 95 for my Win95 home system (and largely escaped Ada 83 under VMS on the school's computer) and I really began to appreciate Ada. There's a few details I disagree with (like why couldn't they have specified square brackets ( '[', ']' ) for arrays (like Pascal) instead of parens? It makes it easier for me to distinguish between array references and function/procedure calls...), and it still feels verbose, I actually prefer Ada 95 to C or C++ now and can really understand why some people argue that Ada's the only real language choice for many very large projects. But for small programs and utilities, I still greatly favor Forth... Larry J. Elmore ljelmore@montana.campus.mci.net