Re: OOP and large systems (was: Ada vs C++, ...)

[jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter)]

Our story thus far:

>>>I won't argue the point that Ada is far superior when it comes to large system
>>>development. This is a fact, plain and simple, and C++ cannot hold a candle
>>>to Ada's abilities to decompose a problem into managable pieces and insure
>>>the consistency between them. However, Ada is not all things to all programming
>>>tasks, and one of the things it isn't is an object oriented programming
>>>language.
>>
>>From the above paragraph, we have these two statements:
>>
>>1) Ada is a superior language for engineering large complex systems.
>>2) Ada is not particularly supportive of OOP.
>>
>>These two statements lead to the following conclusion:
>>
>>3) OOP is largely irrelevant when it comes to engineering large complex systems.

>I don't see that, Jim.  I'd replace your 3) with "Ada is not the best
>language when it comes to engineering large complex OO systems."
>(Replace "not the best language" with "largely irrelevant" if you want
>to retain the strength of your original conclusion.)

Well, I may have overstated the case. Taking a page from the Get Smart
show, WOULD YOU BELIEVE: "3) OOP _may_ be largely irrelevant when it comes
to engineering large complex systems."? I think I can support this one
pretty easily: we have already established from 1) above that Ada is
a superior language for engineering large complex systems, and from 2)
we admit that Ada is not an OOP language [at least not in the classic
sense of the term], and so we have the apparent paradox of large
complex systems being superiorly engineered using a non-OOP language.
This certainly makes ME suspect that OOP must not be particularly
important when it comes to engineering large complex systems.

>My own feeling is that we simply don't *have* a true object-oriented
>language that is also appropriate for large systems.

Ah, okay--this changes things considerably. What you (I THINK) are
claiming is that IF there were a true object-oriented language that was also
appropriate for engineering large systems, then it would be a better
tool to use for such engineering than Ada but that, in the absence of
such a beast, Ada wins by default. Or am I completely lost (wouldn't
be the first time...).

>Might be a neat
>thing to work on, though ...

You could ask the Ada 9x people how neat they think things have been
for them. ;-)
-- 
**************** JIM SHOWALTER, jls@netcom.com, (408) 243-0630 ****************
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