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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE, MSGID_SHORT,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!think!ames!elroy!mahendo!jplgodo!wlbr!scgvaxd!trwrb!trwrc!agnew From: agnew@trwrc.UUCP (R.A. Agnew) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: "C" vrs ADA Message-ID: <216@trwrc.UUCP> Date: Thu, 3-Sep-87 16:03:45 EDT Article-I.D.: trwrc.216 Posted: Thu Sep 3 16:03:45 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 15:25:51 EDT References: <1065@vu-vlsi.UUCP> <2231@cbmvax.UUCP> <36@sarin.UUCP> <3755@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <578@sugar.UUCP> Reply-To: agnew@trwrc.UUCP (R.A. Agnew) Distribution: na Organization: TRW/MEAD San Diego, Ca. Summary: Modula II vs Ada List-Id: In article <578@sugar.UUCP> peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: >What's wrong with Modula-2? As near as I can tell it has all the advantages >of ADA, and few of the disadvantages. That's my main objection to the language: Well for one its not on the DOD approved Language list, but my problems with it are that it doesn't allow operator and procedure overloading and you can't return a structured result from a function.( no flames about pointers please! ) These features prevent application oriented (problem-oriented) abstraction (e.g. package Complex_Matrices which uses Complex_Vectors which uses Complex_Numbers ) These abstractions, and more sophisticated ones, allow me to generate code an order of magnitude faster than I can in Modula II. I know, because I have done the same problems in Ada, Pascal (Green Hills, Turbo, and Sun/Berkeley), Modula II (3 different PC compilers), and C (Green Hills, PCC, and others). Of course I'm talking about applications (like adaptive beamforming) and not system software. Please keep in mind that Ada was intended to write applications software ( not the washing machine variety that Ada authors describe ) rather than system software. Of course that doesn't mean that it's not good for writing OS's and compilers; in fact I've had very good results with Ada in those areas) The treatment of generics in Modula II leaves a lot to be desired. I miss case sensitivity in both. Modula II's sets are wimpy, but then that's why I designed PGL1.