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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!vail!rcd From: rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada 9X objectives Summary: It's a bigger target than you think...and it's moving Message-ID: <16192@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> Date: 11 Oct 89 18:13:03 GMT References: <72799@linus.UUCP> <6699@hubcap.clemson.edu> Organization: Interactive Systems Corp, Boulder, CO List-Id: 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.