Re: c++ vs ada results

[sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan)]

In article <1991Jun12.201740.16463@netcom.COM> jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter) writes:
>Indeed. And they tend to provide real functionality: they work,
>have few bugs, have excellent support backing them up, are validated,
>and scale to projects of significant size and complexity. You get
>what you pay for.

And

>You get what you pay for. Personally, I'd much prefer to buy a validated
>compiler with the number of bugs approaching zero than use a free compiler
>so shot full of bugs the source code is provided to me to patch around
>problems that SHOULD have been taken care of by the vendor.

1.  gcc (and g++) are among the best and least buggy compilers (especially
considering their ages) that I've ever seen.

2.  Real world experience:  a certain software company, affiliated with my
previous employer through various means, has a C compiler.  We got their C
compiler and resold it for our system.  The compiler had more bugs than I
can count on both hands (in binary, that is 8-)); when I found a bug, and
asked "did you fix this?" I would almost always get a response of, "maybe,
but we're working with this later version [which wasn't released until two
years later, mind you] so we can't help you."  My ex-housemate, working for
yet another company (as a customer of said software company) eventually gave
up on their software support and sent me dozens of email messages asking a)
is this a real bug, and, if so, b) how can I work around it?

3.  I have encountered far fewer bugs in gdb than, say, sdb.  Yet sdb is a
"validated debugger," for which one pays lots of money.  Yep.  Useful
things, those proprietary development tools.

>>o	C++ is hard to master.
>Indeed. Note that this contradicts the claim made earlier that C++ is
>easy to learn.

You are truly showing your foolishness here.  Most people out of grade
school realize there is a difference between "learning" something and
"mastering" it.  I guess you're just special, aren't you?

-- 
Sean Eric Fagan  | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it;
sef@kithrup.COM  |  I had a bellyache at the time."
-----------------+           -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_)
Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others.