Re: Comments on Ada vs. C++ panel

[usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!bogus.sura.net!darwin.sura.net !seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@gatech.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <1009.237.uupcb@nitelog.com> michael.hagerty@nitelog.com (Michael Ha
gerty)  writes:

[stuff deleted]
>
>At the risk of offending those who foam up merely thinking of a comparison,
>this is my view of what happened at the ASEET panel.

I think everyone who was there would share your assessment.
>
>It was very tame, tame indeed.  One of the panelists was on the C++ standards
>committee and admittedly was mostly ignorant of Ada-9X.  Hard to fault him
>for that; when you are on a standards committee, the whole world begins to
>narrow on down.  Nonetheless, he did a creditable job of presenting C++ and
>a weak job of highlighting the warts on Ada/Ada-9X.

Right. I think he was in fact kinder to Ada than I would have expected,
especially given the flame wars on the net. Schwarz's comparison, in fact,
showed that Ada (especially Ada9X) and C++ really have more similarity
than they have difference. We tend to argue a lot about issues that are
really at the margin. He pointed out e.g. that even in the C++ world,
multiple inheritance is controversial and perhaps unnecessary for
most applications. Don't forget that Schwarz really comes from the
LISP/Scheme world, and so for him, comparing Ada and C++ is not really
that much of a comparison.
>
>The criticisms of C++ were mostly of the variety, "C++ would be a really nice
>language, IFF you could disable the user's ability to use C."  As most users
>already know, this is the big downside to C++.  Unfortunately, the desired
>ability to limit the use of C in C++ is not possible and thus the rivalry 
>continues unabated.  

Right. IMHO the rivalry is mostly unwarranted. The two languages are
similar enough that almost anything we want to do is possible (and,
probably, cost-effective) in either language. Many in the DoD world
are expending tremendous effort to circumvent the Ada mandate and use
C++. They will no doubt discover that the language was not the issue,
so they might better have devoted that energy to learning and using Ada.
>
>The interesting pitch for Ada was centered around the argument that Ada is
>a superior language for software engineering as it supports most cleanly
>these concepts.  It was interesting, as I said, but the pitch was delivered
>only to the choir.

ASEET had perhaps 100 attendees. Indeed the sermon was delivered to the
converted. Will there be such a panel at OOPSLA? The next OOPSLA actually
wants to emphasize Ada more, so here is the chance we've been waiting for
to make the congregation bigger.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman
co-chair, SIGAda Education Committee

Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering and Applied Science
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052 USA
(202) 994-5253 (voice)
(202) 994-5296 (fax)
mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)

"Americans want the fruits of patience -- and they want them now."
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