Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[Suzette Norby <psnorby@cacd.rockwell.com>]

Daniel P Hudson wrote:
> 
> Peter Amey <pna@erlang.praxis-cs.co.uk> wrote:
> >On 15 Apr 1997, Tom White wrote:
> 
> >> I remember a Turing Award Lecture by C.A.R. Hoare from the early
> >> eighties (dig through some Journals of the ACM).  Hoare was not
> >> an Ada booster; he was concerned about the complexity of Ada from
> >> both the application programmer's and compiler implementor's
> >> perspectives.
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
> >A quote from this 1980 lecture includes the following:
> 
> [SNIP]
> 
> Jeez, he had to go back 17 years to find something wrong with Ada.
> You know what 17 years does to a language? That's 2 years before
> the ANSI X3J11 sub-commitee for C was even formed. We could kill the
> C that was used back then. But who cares what the problems with Ada
> or C were back then, they are long gone by now.
> 
> Perhaps you would like to suffer through a list of problems with
> C from 1980 bit I wouldn't. Why don't you try keeping the
> factual criticisms within at least this decade if not the past
> couple of years.

It was also 3 years before the _first_ Ada standard.

Since we're strolling down memory lane, let's go back a few more 
years.  The following, explaining why C was not even considered as 
a candidate to be the common language, is quoted from "Ada - The 
Project, The DoD High Order Language Working Group", copyright 1993, 
which was originally published in ACM SIGPLAN Notices (Vol. 28, No. 
3, March 1993).**

     ** Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material 
        is granted provided that the copies are not made or 
        distributed for direct commercial advantage, this ACM 
        copyright notice and the title of the publication and its 
        date appear, and notice is given that copying is by 
        permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To 
        copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee.

(Complete text available at "http://sw-eng.falls-church.va.us/AdaIC/pol-hist/history/holwg-93/2.htm".
The following is found on the second "page".) 

"Evaluations 

The next step, beginning in June 1976, was the evaluation of 
existing languages against the integrated set of requirements. 
     
...
Other languages were considered for formal evaluation, but were not 
included because preliminary examination led one to believe that 
they would not meet the requirements so were not viable candidates 
for the purposes of the DoD. One such language was C. ... When Bell 
Labs were invited to evaluate C against the DoD requirements, they 
said that there was no chance of C meeting the requirements of 
readability, safety, etc., for which we were striving, and that it 
should not even be on the list of evaluated languages. We 
recognized the truth in their observation and honored their 
request."
     
C then? Not even close.  In whose opinion?  Bell Labs' opinion!

To get back to the present, there is a comparison (by David A. 
Wheeler) of today's versions of "Ada, C, C++, and Java vs. The 
Steelman" requirements at 
"http://www.adahome.com/History/Steelman/steeltab.htm".  It includes 
the following table (see article for caveats and link to Steelman):

 Language  "No"	"Partial"  "Mostly"  "Yes"  Percentage of 
 					    Answers with 
 					    "Mostly" or
                                            "Yes" 
                                             			
   Ada	    3	   5	    11	      94	93%
    C	   32	  21	     1	      44	53%
   C++	   19	  17	    23	      54	68%
   Java	   20	  12	    22	      59	72%
   
     
C now? Still not close.  C++?  68% might pass, but it won't get you 
on the Dean's List.

-- 
Suzette N.

\\\    \\\    \\\    \\\    \\\    \\\    \\\    \\\    \\\ 
( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)   ( :)
///    ///    ///    ///    ///    ///    ///    ///    /// 
(Speaking only for myself)