Re: An Ada Advice Inquiry

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

On 7 Maj, 15:58, "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mail...@dmitry-kazakov.de>
wrote:

> >> Huh, have you seen Borland Builder 2006?
>
> > No, but I've heard very bad stories about it and I wonder why the hell
> > there is still any market for this.
>
> Yes, because it was a customer requirement

In which case it doesn't make sense to discuss about which choice is
better, right? :-)
And if you accept the offer, you take the full responsibility for all
the pain you get later. Don't blame the language if you are force to
use crappy tools.
Let's talk about new projects where we are the only drivers.

> and because there are fancy
> libraries one believed of being able to use with Borland. This again is
> about how languages and compilers get chosen, in practise.

Right. But again, don't complain about the language (which is a
general concept) if you get lost in the vendor lock-in as a result of
choosing non-standard solutions. Complain about Borland, not about C+
+.

> > Do we really talk about *new
> > projects*, or continuation of legacy code with vendor lock-in?
>
> It is always a continuation, new projects are made by old people living in
> the old world.

I don't agree. The world was not yet invented entirely.

> > What about MSVC++8.0? g++4? Intel? Comeau?
>
> We are using the first.

OK. They are all comparable.

> > The difference between Ada and C++ is that with C++ we have a set of
> > compilers to choose from, so nobody is forcing you to use the worst
> > one (unless you got locked-in, but then it's only your fault).
>
> The choices between compilers are motivated by everything but the quality
> of. It has the same pattern as with the language choice. No chance to
> convince customer to scrap Borland, even less to switch to Ada.

Then, again, if it's the customer who is driving the choice of tools,
there is no sense talking about which choice is better. It's just
inconclusive.

> > With Ada there is a set of versions of GNAT that are "somewhere"
> > between Ada95 and Ada2005, where the exact meaning of "somewhere" is
> > to be discovered by the user.
>
> That is a transitional state.

Of course - just like with C++ compilers a couple of years ago. They
are just in different phases of the transition. Note that it's a
periodic phenomenon with ~10 years period. ;-)

--
Maciej Sobczak
http://www.msobczak.com/