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From: William Starner <billeug@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: Re: Ada vs Delphi?
Date: 1999/08/06
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1999-08-06T21:58:18+00:00
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Andre Ratel wrote:
> 
> I am currently using Delphi (and Object Pascal) for my scientific
> programming. I heard a lot lately about Ada. From what I have
> seen, its syntax is very similar to Object Pascal. (This is no
> surprise since both languages are derived from Algol.)

Actually, IIRC, Ada was derived from Pascal, which explains much of the
similarity. The OO stuff developed independently, though.
 
> What would be the advantages of Ada over Delphi?

The advantages are:

(1) More consistent syntax - Ada was designed to be a large language, whereas
Delphi is a small language that grew.

(2) More portability - Delphi is not portable to anything but Windows without
major changes (depending - I don't know if gpc or Free Pascal could compile an
Object Pascal program that only used ISO I/O.) Ada is portable to almost
everything under the sun. 

(3) More scientific support - This one's a little iffy, but I believe there's
more support for Ada in the scientific world than Delphi.

(4) Better interfacing - Ada's designed to be compatible with the wealth of code
written in C and Fortran.

The primary disadvantage is that Ada doesn't have great GUI support. The best I
could mention would be GLADE & GtkAda, but GLADE's Unix only. I'm not aware of
any GUI-builders for Ada on Windows (though I'm sure the people who use Ada on
Windows will come up with some.)