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From: Cesar Rabak <csrabak@uol.com.br>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Misconception about Ada?
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 23:39:00 -0300
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Date: 2001-02-11T23:39:00-03:00
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Robert Deininger wrote:
> 
[snipped]
> 
> I take it this is the part you don't like:
> 
> "The arguments against C and C++ apply with equal force to other
> conventional compiled languages such as Pascal, Ada, Algol, PL/I, Fortran,
> and compiled Basic dialects. Despite occasional heroic efforts such as the
> Eiffel/Sather family, the differences between conventional languages remain
> superficial when set against their basic design decision to leave memory
> management to the programmer. None is clearly superior to C/C++, and none
> are in significant use in the Unix or Windows worlds. Accordingly we will
> not survey them here."

Yes. This is the main. Also, the whole chapter seems to point that in
the author's opinion languages now are classifie{d,able} by having or
not "memmory management" (garbage collection). . .

> 
> Knowing nothing more about this author than I learned by skimming the
> chapter, I suspect it would be a waste of time to discuss Ada with him.  I
> guess he doesn't have a clue about Ada, but he thinks he knows quite a bit.

The reason I believe we should think of an accurate answer (if not to
influence the rewritting of the pertaining material) is that E. S.
Raymond is very influencial in the Open Software world. His "The
Cathedral and the Bazaar" is taken as the description of the open
software spirit.
 
>  Throwing all these languages in the same basket is silly.

I do agree! Perhaps we could try to summarize some arguments to
enlighten the author.

> 
> I guess Ada is not suitable for the sort of programming he cares about:
> 
> "In 1996 a widely-reported and plausible estimate of community sizes held
> that for every Python hacker there were five Tcl hackers and twelve Perl
> hackers. "

I have to disagree: the book he's writting is "The Art Of Unix
Programming".

We had (have?) a thread discussing the re-implementation of the bind
program in Ada. . .

> 
> Speak up, Ada hackers!

Seconded,

Cesar