Re: Desirability of C++

["E. Robert Tisdale" <edwin@netwood.net>]

Richard D Riehle wrote:

> [snip]
>
> Anyone who chooses C++ over Ada
> for a safety-critical DoD software system either
> 1) does not understand C++,
> 2) does not understand Ada,
> 3) does not understand either or
> 4) has an agenda based on criteria other than
>     the relative merits of the technologies.

Still, the fact is that Ada has been on life support from the start.
It doesn't seem to have much of a future.
Fewer people are learning and using Ada
so it is harder to justify investment in really good
optimizing Ada compilers.  Consequently,
you can hardly blame frustrated programmers
for abandoning Ada in favor of C++.

Of course, C++ in its present form cannot be the final answer.
Perhaps it can evolve into a more robust language
which supports all of the safety features of Ada.
Stronger type checking
and support for concurrent programming
might be a good place to start.
Meanwhile, C++ programmers will be obliged
to incorporate safety features into their class libraries
and do more extensive (expensive) runtime testing.

I'm not sure that I'm ready to pronounce Ada dead yet
but I think that Ada programmers
should prepare themselves for the inevitable.
Nothing, not even a programming language, lives forever.