Re: Is C/C++ the future?

[mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman)]

In article <38k5dg$kko@source.asset.com>,
Michael M. Bishop <bishopm@source.asset.com> wrote:

>It may certainly be true that most Ada projects (certainly large ones)
>require interfaces to external code written in other languages. You're
>also correct in saying that this condition does not make Ada an
>incomplete language. In fact, I believe that the ability to easily 
>integrate code written in other languages with Ada code is one of the
>big strengths of Ada. It's vitally important to me because I'm
>developing a Motif application in Ada.

That you are interfacing to Motif code written in C is not due to Ada's
being an incomplete _language_, only due to the fact that not every
library in the world has been (re-)written in Ada.

Indeed, it would be quite foolish to rewrite every bit of existing
library code in Ada - why re-invent the wheel? I'm at a loss to 
understand why anyone would trash Ada because the Motif people
chose to write their stuff in C? Ada 83 compilers provide pretty good,
pretty standard, interfaces to other languages, and Ada 9X is improving
that substantially.

Take a look at the niceties in Interfaces.C, Interfaces.Cobol, and
Interfaces.Fortran. 

It has always baffled me why anyone would consider the desire (or
need) to link to existing libraries, whatever their language of origin,
as a _disadvantage_ of Ada. Bizarre.

Mike Feldman
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Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) - mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Internet)
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