Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[Dave Wood <dpw@aonix.com>]

Kevin D. Quitt wrote:
> 
> On Sat, 12 Apr 1997 23:51:47 -0700, Dave Wood <dpw@aonix.com> wrote:
> >It seems to me we are much better off in a world where our tools improve
> >the average and raise the lowest common denominator which ultimately
> >causes an across-the-board improvement in our minimal standards and
> >expectations.
> 
> I have a real problem with this.  It's a nice idea to have tools that help
> us.  It's nice for the bad and mediocre programmers that certain language
> features and tools can help them turn out better-quality code than they
> themselves are capable of.  But I think it's bad for everybody else.  No
> automated tools or language can *make* a programmer turn out high-quality
> code.  And while these tools may help prevent bad code, they present the
> illusion that the code turned out is therefore *good*; this illusion is
> dangerous.

Of course tools can't make a bad programmer a good one.  This isn't the
point.  The point is, even the best programmers make mistakes, sometimes
stupid little ones and sometimes insidious big ones.  To the extent that
our languages and tools can help us to reduce these, everybody wins.

The opposite notion, that having better tools will lead to laziness
and poorer quality, is sheer fantasy.  

> Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should all program in assembly
> language or the apocryphal "cat >a.out".  I like strong typing (as long as
> it can be overridden) and I love prototyping.  But any language that does
> not allow me to override the safety features is not useful.  Any system
> that does not let the programmer take responsibility for bypassing the
> safes is *wrong*.

Ada certainly permits you to do just about any stupid thing you want
to do, however unlike C/C++ stupidity is not the default.  Generally 
speaking, you must actively and knowingly enact the stupidity.

> >...you are better off if the tools (and methods, and operating
> >systems, and languages, etc.) used by the computing community improve
> >to reduce the introduction of as many errors in as many situations
> >as possible.
> 
[snip about arianne]
>
> There is nothing in any language, or any tool, that can prevent this kind
> of problem, because it's not a programming problem.  It's a design problem
> that comes from people who don't bother to design what they're doing.
> They just program.

Right.  And the less focus that needs to be on the niggling details of
proper programming, the more focus can be spent where it helps the most:
nailing down the real requirements and laying out the best design.

You set up a little red herring there, because I wasn't arguing that
a better language would have prevented the arianne explosion.  Clearly
not.  What I was arguing is that to the extent that technology exists
to help us reduce a certain class of errors (in this case programming
and runtime errors) we will do well to use it.  Arianne was of course
a screw-up of a different class of errors, however design and management
flaws were not the thread to which I was responding.  Let's stay on 
topic.

-- Dave Wood
-- Product Manager, ObjectAda for Windows
-- Aonix - "Ada with an Attitude"
-- http://www.aonix.com