Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada)

[Wes Groleau <groleau+news@freeshell.org>]

CTips wrote:
> Nope, I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that:
>  - the safety features of Ada can come with a significant run-time cost

You have said it, but you haven't been very convincing.

>  - you're going to end up escaping out of Ada for a lot of things 
> (particularily in systems programming).

I'm not convinced here, either.  Some people are
so unconvinced that they are trying to write an
entire operating system in Ada.  There is a X-server
(or is it just an X11R6 client library?) written
in Ada which I've heard is quite efficient and robust.

> Also, since a lot of interesting things require escaping from the core 
> language and bending the rules of the language, you have two options:
>   - you can write it all in assembly
>   - or you can write in a language where you can reasonably expect that 
> your bending of the rules won't make the compiler do something you 
> didn't expect.

!?!  If you are truly "bending the rules," how can you
expect anything but surprises?  What exactly _is_ a
"rule" in this usage?

Ada rules are quite clear:

  A {some set of constructs} will never compile.
  B {another set of constructs} is explicitly
             stated to have unpredictable results.
  C {another set} has the results of each clearly defined.
  D {another very small set} might exist, things that
             just didn't get thought of.

"bending the rules" puts you in group A.
"following the rules" puts you in group C.
"being stupid" puts you in group B.

One advantage of Ada and languages like it
is that sets B and D are much smaller.

-- 
Wes Groleau
    ------
    "The reason most women would rather have beauty than brains is
     they know that most men can see better than they can think."
                                -- James Dobson