Re: Ada and QNX

[Igor Kovalenko <kovalenko@home.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote:
> 
> One is tempted to suppose a smiley is meant here, but other
> evidence in Igor's posts make it clear that he certainly has
> NOT read an Ada book carefully, so who knows?
> 

I did read it and not once. And yes, it was useful reading and I had
enjoyed some parts of it. And no, I did not use Ada in a serious
project. To give you some more background, I knew Pascal before C, PL/1
and Fortran before Pascal and IBM360 assembler before that. I also did
straight machine-code programming occasionally including some esoteric
architectures with 45 bit word, which I believe still control some
russian satellites.

> Things seem to become obvious to you in mysterious ways,
> certainly objective information does not seem to be an
> ingrediant in this process.

The main ingredient is a magic crystal ball which I carefully hide in my
dungeon. I found one back in Siberia's forests while walking my pet
wolves trained to kill treacherous western invaders. It came to me there
clear as holy shining that Ada must be one of them, being made by DoD.
Also, 'Ada' sounds a lot like 'hell' in russian.

> The above statement is complete
> nonsense.

You don't ever say 'IMHO'. You must have another crystal ball, bigger
than mine :(

> Actually in my experience, Ada programs in general tend to
> use far more of Ada than is true in the case of C++. I see
> lots and lots of C++ programs that just completely ignore
> very important parts of the language, including for example,
> exceptions, name spaces, and the standard template library,
> and indeed inheritance for many programs.
> 

One could blame you for being unjust here. There are bad programs in C++
and there are bad programs in Ada. Nothing in Ada prevents one from
writing those, just as nothing in Ada makes all Ada programs bad. Same
story for C++. You however dare to say that more C++ programs are bad
than Ada programs. Perhaps, but then it is mostly because there are
simply far more C++ programs in total than Ada programs.

> I am beginning to think this is all a big joke, I think that
> it is likely that Igor is just having fun in trolling.

Well, I have been told in the middle of this thread that trolling about
C++ does indeed make a lot of fun for Ada supporters. So, may be I'm
trolling too, and may be not, but if I'm not I may start without notice
because I used to be a good troller and have to support my reputation
once in a while.

> Since
> it is hard to believe that anyone could be this blatant in
> forming bogus conclusions with no data (note that Igor has
> not even given a TRACE of evidence that he knows anything
> about Ada other than how to properly case the name of the
> language).

Yes I know her name. Not sure if she'd liked what DoD have done with it.

> I am reminded of Lieberman saying in a recent speach that he
> would not criticize Bush, but would criticize his record. It

For that matter this whole thread reminds me those arguments of
respective candidates. Everyone knows that no matter what the hell they
say people will choose based of their human sympathies, yet everyone
exercises in denouncing each other. But those folks at least have a
clear goal and timetable and they know one of them will sure as hell
win, unlike us here ;)

> is definitely a bad idea to just generally denounce C++
> without knowing it, and those who do, don't help and just
> make themselves look silly (as Igor does when he generally
> denounces Ada -- although if this is a clever troll, then
> hats off, because it is very well done :-)
> 

Ouch, I have earned a compliment for trolling, perhaps I should stick to
it as it seems to be what I'm best at =:>

> Not if you were deliberately trolling :-)
> 

I was not, originally. If you take time to read my first post it was in
responce to rather reckless and unsupported rant about C++, made in
quite insulting manner for true C++ adepts, but NOT cross-posted to
comp.lang.c++. Yet I still was pretty careful to say only few words
about my personal _perception_ of Ada and I have put a big disclaimer
there. I had no idea what a can of worms that will open. 

Ada must be as alive as Elvis, looking at this chorus of passionate
fans. But at least Elvis was The King when he walked the streets ;)

- Igor