From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,f868fe8fe0ec86c1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-06-08 15:08:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!jfk3-feed1.news.digex.net!intermedia!news.stealth.net!news-east.rr.com!news.rr.com!chnws02.mediaone.net!chnws06.ne.mediaone.net!24.128.8.202!typhoon.ne.mediaone.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3B214CF2.1CBE6C04@mediaone.net> From: Ed Falis X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.3 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: smalltalk vs. Ada References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 22:08:14 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.96.132.248 X-Complaints-To: abuse@mediaone.net X-Trace: typhoon.ne.mediaone.net 992038094 65.96.132.248 (Fri, 08 Jun 2001 18:08:14 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 18:08:14 EDT Organization: Road Runner Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8457 Date: 2001-06-08T22:08:14+00:00 List-Id: Mark Lundquist wrote: > Eiffel is probably worth looking at. It's a pure class-oriented language > that supports multiple inheritance. It embodies a philosophy called "design > by contract" that really seems like it belongs in Ada too, but nobody can > quite figure out where to make it fit. Eiffel does not really have any > concept of interface and implementation being textually separated, so like > Java the methods are written in-line as part of the class definition. I > much prefer the Ada approach where you have a specification and a body. > From what I've seen, Ada people seem to have a lot of respect for Eiffel as > a well-designed language, so I basically regard it positively even though > I've never actually used it :-). > I have. It's a pleasure - much less "plumbing" to do OOP compared to Ada, if that's what you want to do. The MI facilities work really well (unlike C++), the syntax is clean like Ada, and DbC is very useful (though pragma Assert in Ada gets you most of the way there). It's much weaker in terms of portability of code between compilers than Ada is. And it's not quite there yet for concurrency, or IMO real-time and systems programming. Garbage collection also removes a lot of plumbing for general kinds of applications. If you can't tell, Ada and Eiffel are my favorite languages. - Ed