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From: steve@gondor.psu.edu.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,sci.space,sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: "C" vrs ADA
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Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 09:00:15 EDT
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Posted: Fri Aug 21 09:00:15 1987
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In article <253@etn-rad.UUCP> jru@etn-rad.UUCP (0000-John Unekis) writes:

>	                                                          It was a
>	  moderately structured language , with a syntax that was similar
>	  to the UNIX c shell (or vice versa).

Vice versa, or so BSD claims.  If you ask me, however, I can't see much
of a connection between csh and C.  ...just an opinion.

>
>	  Because UNIX does not handle real-time applications (such as
>	  interrupt handling) very well,

Here I agree, but not because of what unix is, but how unix is implimented.
Interrupts are not all that clumsy to deal with in unix, and there
is actually even some structure and cleanliness here, but the process
structure of the unix kernal isn't.  A context switch is made a bit messy
by the fact that a process's having to modes: user mode and kernal mode.
An interrupt does not switch the context like it could, making the
process in kernal mode make the decision.  I can imagine a UNIX that
would handle interrupts efficiently, but the internals would be different.

>	                                                       As long as
>	  computers remain basically Von Neuman processors, no language is
>	  going to offer any advantages in the real world to a language
>	  like COBOL. No business is going to go through the 3 to 5 years
>	  effort of retraining and converting of existing code just to
>	  satisfy the dogmatic prejudices of computer-science weenies.

Lets hear it for Hypercubes and connection machines!
Also, being a computer-science weenie, I would like to say that the idea
is not to break people of the COBOL blues, but to start the new sites off
in the right direction!  (P.S.  I read in SIGOPS recently about some neat
unix [they call it AIX] stuff IBM is doing in Texas.

>	                                                       Therefore if
>	  you want a career in military/aerospace, go for ADA.

Well, I guess so.  I'm not qualified to judge.  I suppose ADA wouldn't
hurt your career.


--Steve

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