Re: an interested business-oriented programmer

[James Rogers <jimmaureenrogers@worldnet.att.net>]

Al Christians wrote:
> 
> But, if we are talking about business-oriented programming,
> does Aonix implement interfaces.COBOL and Annex F ("information
> systems", which includes decimal data)?
> 
> The competition is COBOL and/or either Java or C++ with a decimal
> numbers class library.
> 

I do not have the answer to that. I was using ObjectAda on the
PharLap ETS operating system for robotic controls. 

How much of an interface to COBOL will you get with Java or
C++? The only language interface defined for either of those
languages is C. Even without some Annex F, Ada supports business
applications better than C++ or Java. What kind of fixed point
numbers are defined as part of either language? (Does the answer
"none" come to mind?)

Let's talk a little about execution efficiency too. C++ and Ada
implementations exhibit similar execution efficienies, but both
still dramatically beat Java. I know a lot of effort has been
spent to improve the efficiency of Java Virtual Machines.
Improvements have been made. Parity has not been achieved. Even
more important is the fact that most common Java programming
idioms are terribly inefficient. For instance, editing each character
in a 1024 character Java string will require 2 Megabytes of
memory, and involve the creation and garbage collection of 1024
strings. The way around this is to convert the Java String object
to a Java StringBuffer object, perform all the edits, then convert
the StringBuffer object to another String object, requiring only
about 6 Kilobytes of memory and the creation ( and garbage
collection ) of three objects. This is clearly faster than the
use of only Java Strings, but also slower than editing an Ada 
string.

I do not see how C++ and Java can be considered close to Ada's
capabilities in the Business arena. C++ lacks Ada's numeric types
as well as any ability to interface with COBOL. Java mirrors
C++'s deficiencies topped off with a nasty dose of inefficiency.

COBOL is still a highly respectable language for business systems.
COBOL is optimized for large scale transaction processing
applications. The biggest problem facing COBOL is its aging
workforce. Few people are learning COBOL. Some companies are feeling
forced to develop solutions in other languages just so that they
can easily hire developers and maintainers for their code. With
that attitude, those employers are often going to choose the current
fad language rather than make a strict technical decision.

Another sad fact is that most employers looking to replace
COBOL have never heard of Ada. 

Jim Rogers
Colorado Springs, Colorado USA