Re: Some questions about Ada.

[Dave Jones <davedave@io.com>]

Carl Laurence Gonsalves wrote:
> I've got a couple of questions about Ada. I have to confess that I've never
> written a single line of Ada code. I've got experience in C, C++, Modula-3,
> Java, and Scheme, and several other languages. I've recently become
> interested in finding out about Ada, partly because I've noticed that both
> Java and Modula-3 seem to have been influenced by Ada's design, and I think
> both languages are very good.
>

My opinion:  Ada95 is the best all-around language for software engineering.  
C++ is awful.  Nevertheless, if I were starting a project today, I would 
probably choose to use C++.  Why?:  More (and better and cheaper) tools are 
available for C++, more programmers are trained to program in C++, et cetera.
 
> One thing I'm wondering about is packages. I've heard that packages are
> "better" than than the way C++ uses classes. I'm curious as to why this is.
> Modula-3 has modules (which are similar, AFAIK, to Ada's packages) and
> "object types" (classes) as two distinct entities. I'v always thought that
> C++'s way of allowing just about anything to be nested in a class much
> cleaner and simpler. (and for the record, I was programming in Modula-3
> before I was programming in C++) So are packages better? Why?
>

I would not say that packages are necessarily better.  They are, however, easier
to read and maintain than C++ classes.  (Of course, if you switched from a well-
designed language like Modula-3 to C++, maintainability and ease of reading are
probably secondary concerns for you.)  By the way, Ada95 is fully object oriented, 
so you can create classes (But be careful:  Ada uses different terms for its 
object-oriented constructs than other languages do.).
 
> Second, I've been wondering why Ada is case-insensitive. I'm aware that Ada
> was very carefully designed, so I'm thinking there must be some reason it
> was made case-insensitive rather than case-sensitive, but I can't imagine
> what that reason could be.
>

This was done on purpose.  Although it gives the programmer less flexibility, 
it does make for more reliable programs:  If you have ever tried to maintain
a C program where This and tHIS do not mean the same thing, you know what I mean.

-- Dave Jones
davedave@io.com