Re: "C" vrs ADA

[crowl@rochester.UUCP]

In article <253@etn-rad.UUCP> jru@etn-rad.UUCP (0000-John Unekis) writes:
>The Ada language is far more than just a language.  Ada includes standards for
>editors, compilers, and run-time symbolic debuggers.

Ada is just a language.  The Ada Programming Support Environment is a standard
for all that other stuff.

>The C language evolved at AT&T in the process of developing the UNIX operating
>system.  There were, beleive it or not, an A language and a B language that
>preceded it.

There was no A language.  C derived from B which derives from BCPL.  Algol
enters the picture somewhere.

>Finally with the C language the original developer of the UNIX operating
>system (which was done on a PDP-7 microcomputer) felt that he had what he
>wanted.  It was a moderately structured language, with a syntax that was
>similar to the UNIX c shell (or vice versa).

The Unix C shell came much later.

>As UNIX gained wide acceptance the C language became more popular.  It has the
>advantage over FORTRAN of having structured variable types, but without the 
>overly elaborate type checking done by a language like PASCAL.

Pascal does not have overly elaborate type checking.  It lacks escapes from the
type checking, but the checking itself is at about the right level.  Note that
Ada adopts this same level of checking.

>It does share with Pascal the fact that each was developed by a single
>individual and thus represents that individuals prejudices in computer
>languages.

C was developed over time with the input of many individuals.  Kernighan and
Ritche are acknowledged "prime" movers, but you cannot say that C was developed
by a single individual.

>This standard was named ADA, (the name of the mistress of Charles Babbage,
>who invented a punched card driven loom, considered to be the first computer,
>she was rumored to be the first person to ever write a program on punched
>cards- why her name is appropriate for a real-time language is a mystery).

Ada Augusta Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, as an associate of Babbage.  I
do not remember reading anything that indicated she was his mistress.  Charles
Babbage DID NOT invent the punched card driven loom, it was invented by Jaquard
in the 1700's.  The loom was not the first computer.  The first computer was
(arguably) Babbage's Analytic Engine, which was never built.  The machine was
driven by cards, but since it was never built, I doubt Ada ever punched a card.
She did write programs (on paper) for the machine.  Ada Lovelace was the first
programmer, so it is reasonable to name a programming language after her.

>(Carnegie-Mellon University is rumored to have required it for all sophomores
>which resulted in flunking out half their sophomore class)

Given the accuracy of the previous statements, I tend to doubt this one too.

>[Ada] will fail for the same reason that Pascal, Modula2, C, PL1, and others
>have failed - IBM is the dominant force in the commercial market (~75 percent
>of all commercial installations) and COBOL dominates the IBM installed base
>(~90 percent of IBM applications are in COBOL).

Pascal and C are VERY SUCCESSFUL.  PL/1 and Modula-2 have NOT FAILED by any
stretch of the imagination.  LOTS of programs are written in these languages.
There are a LOT of IBM applications written in Fortran.

Excluding microcomputers, DEC has sold far computers than IBM.  (They are not
as big, but that's not my point.)  I doubt they are anywhere near 75% of all
commercial installations unless by commercial you mean "payroll department"
instead of "corporation".

You are stating that a MINIMUM of 67% of all applications are written in COBOL.
Please back this up.

>As long as computers remain basically Von Neuman processors, no language is
>going to offer any advantages in the real world to a language like COBOL.

Were you asleep when you wrote this?  The DoD may not be very bright, but they
certainly would no have spent millions of dollars developing Ada to get a
language that offered no advantages over Cobol.  Nor would substantial research
in programming have resulted in so many good alternatives.

>No business is going to go through the 3 to 5 years effort of retraining and
>converting of existing code ...

If it takes a company 3 to 5 years to retrain they should hire new personel.
No one advocates converting existing code just to have it in a different
language.  However, many people recommend coding new applications in newer
languages so that the benifits of modern programming languages can be realized.

>... just to satisfy the dogmatic prejudices of computer-science weenies.

Well the computer scientists have changed their opinions since 1960, you have
not.  Which indicates a prevalence for dogmatism.  Does "no language is going
to offer any advantages ... [over] Cobol" sound like dogmatism?  Yes.

Your "weenies" attitude is equivalent to "anyone who uses brakes in a car is a
weenie."  Computer scientists advocate better programming languages because
they make programming less expensive and result in products with fewer bugs.
Are these admirable goals?  I think so.

-- 
  Lawrence Crowl		716-275-8479	University of Rochester
		     crowl@cs.rochester.arpa	Computer Science Department
 ...!{allegra,decvax,seismo}!rochester!crowl	Rochester, New York,  14627