Re: Desirability of C++

["Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen" <tarjei@online.no>]

E. Robert Tisdale wrote:
> 
> 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++.

That is not true. More people know how to program in Ada this year than
last year. Because a lot of people learn Ada as their first programming
language (thanks to gnat). Even here in Norway it is moving in that
direction. And in the (norwegian) programming groups there seem to be a
concensus that pascal like programming languages are far better than C
languages, at least when one tries to learn to program.

There seem to be quite a few who use Ada to create interesting software.

And these people who knows Ada have something that almost nobody else
has; they know that it takes a lot more time to get a C++ program out
the door than a similar Ada program. The last estimate I saw was from
someone who estimated that he spent two to four times as much time to
debug his C++ code than his Ada code (it was a project which had half of
each).


Greetings,