From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,4d4a46ae26845fef X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-03-19 21:42:08 PST Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Path: sparky!uunet!seas.gwu.edu!mfeldman From: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) Subject: Re: Ada as a beginning language Message-ID: <1993Mar19.214155.9134@seas.gwu.edu> Sender: news@seas.gwu.edu Organization: George Washington University References: <1993Mar18.033431.12194@ariel.ec.usf.edu> <1993Mar18.220821.9750@Rapnet.Sanders.Lockheed.Com> Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1993 21:41:55 GMT Date: 1993-03-19T21:41:55+00:00 List-Id: In article emery@dr_no.mitre.org (David Emery) writes: >In a discussion on this with a college professor, I asserted Ada's >greatest strength is its well-defined error handling. As much stuff >as possible is checked at compile-time. Stuff that isn't checked at >compile-time (unless erroneous) is caught at run-time with predictable >behavior (i.e. an exception). Contract this to C, FORTRAN and Pascal, >and try to explain to a student what happens when s/he accidentally >divides by zero... > dave ...or tries to write into the 25th element of a 20-element array. As an exercise, try this with your favorite C compiler. As for Pascal, we always have to ask "which Pascal?" because the standard for Pascal does not specify the behavior of such an operation (or much of anything else). At least with Ada, you are _guaranteed_ that any of the 500-odd validated compilers will cause your program to raise constraint_error. This professor agrees with Dave. 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) "The most important thing is to be sincere, and once you've learned how to fake that, you've got it made." -- old show-business adage ------------------------------------------------------------------------