Re: Language Flames

[simon@blue.cs.washington.edu (Kevin Simonson)]

     In article <3208@sparko.gwu.edu> mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)
writes:

=Ah, yes, Messrs. Holden and Showalter: it's deja vu all over again.
=Seems we go around this loop several times a year till everyone gets bored
=with it again. ...
=Jim: leave him alone, maybe he'll go away again...

     When I was a working person instead of a student, we had access to a
newsgroup that regularly posted what it very accurately termed religious
debates over whether Ada or C++ was better suited for the particular niche
Ada was designed to fill.  I remember thinking that if I listened to all
the pros and cons, I would get some sort of a feel for the number of people
who thought each language was superior (while arguing farely close to ra-
tionally) and that I might use that as a guage of whether one language
really WAS superior.

     Now that I'm a student, and am actually LEARNING C, it's a whole dif-
ferent story, and I sometimes wonder how C++, that has C as its parent,
could possibly be considered as an alternative to Ada.

     I think this initial reaction of mine is typical of how many people
look at the Ada-C++ debate.  After all, I was raised with Pascal and Modula
2, which are related to Ada much more than they are to C.  As I code more
and more in C I keep telling myself that there are very possibly advantages
to the language that I will get to know in time.  (This might not be true,
but I keep telling it to myself anyway.)

     What about the question of the REAL superiority of one of the two lan-
guages?  Given the strong opinions (by apparently rational people) on both
sides of the debate, I'd wager that the good points of both languages are
probably close enough together that it really is worth nobody's while to go
to the depth necessary to rigorously prove the answer to this question.

     Perhaps, as somebody suggested earlier, the best idea is to keep an
open mind and see if one (or both) of the languages is fit enough to SUR-
VIVE a significant amount of time.

                                      ---Kevin Simonson
-- 
Murphy's Law of Aerodynamics:  When the weight of the paperwork equals the
                               weight of the airplane, the airplane flies.