Re: Ada 9X objectives

[rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn)]

William Wolfe writes about Ada 9X and C++

>    There are a lot of negative things in C++, and a lot of the good
>    stuff in Ada is not available in that language.  The only two real
>    advantages C++ can cite are: easy transition for C programmers, and
>    multiple inheritance...

This is a parochial view--something which is a perennial problem in the Ada
community, and which has done a lot to inhibit interest in Ada, let alone
acceptance of it.  If you want folks to move to Ada, you can't get it to
happen by just proclaiming the obvious, innate superiority of Ada and
waiting for them to arrive in droves.  You're going to have to try to
understand why they're using C (or C++ or whatever they're using).  There
are many reasons; there are reasons not to convert to Ada; there is
inertia.  The harder you try to dismiss their reasons by working from your
own viewpoints, the less credibility you have.  (The reasons may not even
be good ones!  They still have to be addressed.)

The credibility problems only get worse as you deal with more experienced
software people.  The longer people have watched and worked in software,
the more alleged panaceas they've seen, and the more sure they are that
there aren't any panaceas.  Also, it's likely that they've worked in some
truly awful languages and have produced decent software in spite of it, so
they'll doubt that the choice of programming language is as important as
you say.  Finally, they'll have been watching the progress of Ada over the
years and will have concluded that with the enormous amount of money thrown
at it, if it were truly wonderful it would have really caught on by now.

Part of what I'm saying is that you've got a marketing problem.  Even if
you have a wonderful product, you still have to sell it--you'll go broke if
you just wait for customers to find you.  And a lot of us aren't convinced
that the product is all that wonderful anyway.

[Wolfe finishing up on importance of multiple inheritance]
>    By incorporating this mechanism into Ada, the sole argument for C++
>    becomes the unwillingness of C/C++ programmers to give up their
>    hacking ways, and this is a problem we can successfully address.

This is flawed in several ways.  The first is the attitude that C/C++
programmers have "hacking ways" somehow tied to the language, and that they
can be corrected by setting them on the One True Path to Ada.  Look, this
is arrogant on the part of Ada folks and demeaning toward the C/C++ folks.
You should be able to see that this sort of attitude won't cut it, *regard-
less* of how much you like Ada or dislike C++!  The arrogant and insular
attitudes of Ada's adherents have done far more damage to the language than
the lack of any feature could do.

Also, the argument that you can just add multiple inheritance and win the
battle is based on the assumption that C++ is now static, that it's not
going to acquire any more useful features.  I suspect strongly that this is
a mistaken assumption.  You had better assume that you are aiming at a
moving target.  If you want anything approaching a contemporary programming
language, you're not going to get it by taking five years to get to where
C++ is now, and then proclaiming you're done.  The activity and adaptability
of C++ is something you're going to have to address somehow if you're going
to "compete" with it.

Beyond that, if you just add a feature to Ada, it doesn't immediately
become as useful as a feature that's existed in C++ for a while.  There's a
maturing period, during which people find the gotchas and evolve the
paradigms.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd@ico.isc.com    uucp: {ncar,nbires}!ico!rcd     (303)449-2870
   ...No DOS.  UNIX.