Re: Desirability of C++

[Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com>]

tmoran@bix.com wrote (re Turbo Pascal strings):
> 
>   How do those differ from
>     ... is new Ada.Strings.Bounded.Generic_Bounded_Length(255);

1. They arrived in usable form about 15 years sooner.  

2. Less code bloat from multiple types with different maximum
lengths in the same program.

3. No type-checking problems when mixing strings of different maximum
lengths in assignments and expressions.  Every string is a string, and
all the string operations and the whole library of string functions will 
operate on all of them (cf Ada 95).   This certainly has a downside, but 
the obvious inconveniences of Ada 83 string operations must have cost 
Ada quite a bit of acceptance.   Compared even to Ada 95, the rules for 
Turbo Pascal string handling are somewhere in the gray area between 
liberty, license and anarchy.  Somehow, people,   particularly young 
male software developers, seem to like that kind of stuff (cf C/C++).

Before Ada 83, the most popular vaguely similar language with the best 
support for structured programming was  probably PL1, which was used in 
about 10-15% of mainframe shops according to surveys I saw.  So, the PL1
programmers were the best shot at early adopters to popularize Ada, 
if that were to happen.  They would have been particularly likely 
suspects as they expanded from the mainframe to PC, for the PL1
implementations for the PC were also scarce and limited. But string 
handling with Ada 83 was no fun compared even to PL1 as of 1965, so Ada 
would not have been an easy  sell even if there were good and 
competitively priced Ada compilers for DOS PC's back in the 80's.


Al