Re: Ada vs. C/C++...

[sun-barr!cs.utexas.edu!csc.ti.com!tilde.csc.ti.com!mksol!mccall@ames.arc. nasa.gov (fred j mccall 575-3539)]

In <1992Dec8.094613.13886@u.washington.edu> bketcham@carson.u.washington.edu (B
enjamin Ketcham) writes:


>OK, I have a question.  I've seen a lot of complaints on this newsgroup
>about how the DoD and other Ada advocates preach only to the converted,
>and never try to make the case for Ada's supposed superiority to C++
>(or any other assorted languages) in a truly public forum.

>Just about every time I bother to read this newsgroup, I see a large
>proportion of highly emotional bickering about Ada's relevance and value
>compared to other languages, including quite a bit of (what seems to me
>to be) fairly well-informed and cogent rebuttal from people who prefer
>C or C++.

>If Ada is so great, and (as I have seen asserted, without factual
>support) has solved a number of important problems that C++ is still
>struggling with, then why do I *never* see any mention of this from any
>of you folks on comp.lang.c++ or comp.lang.c?  

They don't do it for the same reason that fans of C/C++ shouldn't be
starting such threads here; it's not the charter of the newsgroup.
The different situation seems to be happening here periodically, where
some fan of Ada will spontaneously bash C/C++ (out of what I tend to
think of these days as 'Amiga Syndrome' -- they're convinced they have
a technically superior solution and just get incredibly frustrated
that the market isn't recognizing that, so they bash the current
market favorite).  Those are the 'Ada wars' posts I tend to respond to
here.  I tend to have a similar reaction whenever anyone starts or
tries to start a 'language war', no matter what the involved languages
are, although of course I seldom see the ones between languages in
which I have no interest and figure that bashing COBOL is ALWAYS fair.
;-)

>Are C/C++ people just too
>bourgeouis for you Ada enthusiasts to bother talking down to?  If you
>complain about nobody selling Ada to the larger community where the real
>decisions about what language to use are made, why then don't you pop
>over to the C/C++ groups and reveal to them the fantastic solutions that
>Ada offers to the seemingly insoluble problems that they are only now
>realizing the existence of?  You might win a few converts, which is what
>I seem to gather that everybody on this newsgroup would like.

Or they might be judged to be as obnoxious as Amigoids who do this
sort of thing are; couple that with the mandate, and it sounds to me
like a sure way to LOSE converts.

>If it's so much better, why won't you defend it in the open field?  Sure,
>you'd get some irrational flames, but if your points were so logically
>sensible, I think that most of the thoughtful and open-minded people on
>C/C++ would have to concede that you had a point, if indeed you did.

Because doing that sort of thing is generally considered rude and
obnoxious on USENET?  People who are interested in Ada read the Ada
group (which is why I read it), people who are interested in C and C++
read those groups (which is why I read them), and trying to start
language wars in any of them is generally felt to be in incredibly bad
taste.  Have you read all the new user stuff about manners and such
before you suggested this?

-- 
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live
 in the real world."   -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden
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Fred.McCall@dseg.ti.com - I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.