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From: "kevin  cline" <kevin.cline@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: why learn C?
Date: 2 Apr 2007 00:18:54 -0700
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Date: 2007-04-02T00:18:54-07:00
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On Apr 2, 2:07 am, <adawo...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> "kevin cline" <kevin.cl...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1175491660.511530.58430@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com...
>
> > For me, the short reason is that Ada generics are not as powerful as C+
> > + templates.  The power of C++ templates has enabled me to write
> > compact, efficient type-safe application code at a very high level in
> > a way which is not possible in Ada.
>
> Those of us who use Ada write efficient, type-safe application code in
> Ada all the time and it is certainly possible in Ada.

No doubt you do.  I have written efficient type-safe application code
in Ada too.  But for the most interesting sorts of computationally
intensive applications I have written, I found C++'s powerful
templates to be indispensable.

For example, for a logistics application, variable quantities were
modeled as piecewise constant functions of time, but for efficiency
there were multiple implementing classes: one for functions that were
constant over all time, another for functions that were periodic,
another for functions whose variation was defined by a table, and so
on.

With C++ templates it was a relatively simple matter to define an
algebra on those functions so that one could say things like:

 Time end = integrate_until(f1 * phase_shift(f2,start) / f3 + f4, q);

even though f1, f2, f3, and f4 were possibly of different types.

In Ada, dozens of lines of generic instantiations would have been
needed before the expression could be written.