From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 4 Feb 93 17:59:35 GMT From: usenet.ins.cwru.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!bogus.sura.net!darwin.sura.net !seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman@gatech.edu (Michael Feldman) Subject: Re: Comments on Ada vs. C++ panel Message-ID: <1993Feb4.175935.10573@seas.gwu.edu> List-Id: 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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." ------------------------------------------------------------------------