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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,1042f393323e22da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: amd001@its.maynick.com.au (Andrew Dunstan) Subject: Re: Any research putting c above ada? Date: 1997/05/06 Message-ID: <336eda35.0@news2.maynick.com.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 239678643 Distribution: world References: <5ih6i9$oct$1@waldorf.csc.calpoly.edu> <5ijb0o$ajc@ns1.sw-eng.falls-church.va.us> <334d3da5.14386594@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <2senchydgk.fsf@hpodid2.eurocontrol.fr> <5im3an$3dv@bcrkh13.bnr.ca> <2sybamvslk.fsf@hpodid2.eurocontrol.fr> <5ius80$1nr8@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com> <335ae79e.55ed@dynamite.com.au> <5jde9l$u8q@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com> <33643f1f.0@news2.maynick.com.au> <5k3fma$126a@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com> Organization: Mayne Nickless Ltd Information Technology Services Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-05-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Matthew Givens (NKSW39B@prodigy.com) wrote: : amd001@its.maynick.com.au (Andrew Dunstan) wrote: : > : > : >This is a worrying statement. If you are a skilled programmer, you : >would pick up languages like a sponge and not be worried about small : >things like syntax. If you think you are highly proficient in C but : >only moderately skilled in Ada, either you have not done enough Ada or : >you are not thinking about things at an appropriate level ... most of : >your thought should be at a language independent level. : You don't really think that, do you? Of all the programmers I know, none : of them are equally skilled/comfortable in all the languages they know, : amount of experience with each taken into consideration. Again, that's : because one (or more) is naturally easier for them to handle. Can I : program in Ada? Yes, but not with the same ease that I can in C. Umm ... well ... yes, I do think that. All the good programmers I know are competent in a substantial number of languages, and the language they happen to be writing in makes little difference to the ease with which they write code because they think about problems in a largely language-independent way. My sister used to teach English as a Second Language: she had a great bumper sticker on her car that read: Monolinguism Is Curable. We ought to adopt it as a motto in the computing world :-) I've programmed in many laguages (gave up counting some years ago, the count was somewhere in the 20s I think) and loved them all (well, nearly all, I hated Basix and DCL). On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for a language that helps you to avoid some (a lot?) of the mistakes that pretty well all programmers make. The commonest errors (by far) that I have seen in years of debugging other people's code (and some of my own) have been pointer mismanagement and off-by-one errors in array processing. Ada really does shine in helping you avoid these (as well as having many other good points). : > : >If you work on a large software project, this is a recipe for : >disaster. You can't just let programmers "do the thing that fits them : >temperamentally". There must be standards etc. After all, the major : >cost in most large s/w projects is not in initial coding but in : >maintenance. This is where Ada shines - it is aimed at being easily : >maintainable, easier on the reader at the cost of a little more trouble : >to the writer. That's why many proigrammers hate it, of course, but is : >the very reason that many more managers should love it. : I never said anything about ignoring standards. In fact, I always : program to a set of standards, some of them industry and some of them : mine. But what does that have to do with the fact that many programmers : work better in one language than another? Well, one of the standards on a project of any size is surely going to be the language(s) used. This should NOT be decided on the basis of programmer preference, IMHO. And what you state as a "fact" is a highly debatable matter. cheers andrew -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- There's nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so - Hamlet http://www.gr-lakes.com/~andrew (including PGP key) PGP Key fingerprint = 5C 44 7D E4 76 A3 31 DE 3D 11 FA 15 4D 87 1F 5E -------------------------------------------------------------------------