Re: Ada The Best Language?

[Darren New <dnew@san.rr.com>]

> No but do you have any data that measures how much more productive an
> Ada developer is using these features? 

I think that begs the question. If I'm writing a program that needs to
be portable and multitasking, then it makes me much more productive to
have the ability to do that. What you're saying is that you've never
written programs that need the advanced features that Ada supports that
aren't found in C++. That's fine, but it's not saying anything about
Ada. If you've only ever written programs for one platform, you might
not value portability, but that doesn't mean it doesn't enhance
productivity when you *do* need it.

For that matter, I'd expect that if you want a productivity study, study
a project written in Ada where the author of the contract specified Ada
as the delivery language. I expect the Ada programmers will be much more
productive in fulfilling this contract than the C++ programmers. This
again says nothing about Ada or C++.

So what question are you actually asking? Certainly not the one in the
subject line.

If you're asking "Is Ada better than C++?" then that's one question. If
you're asking "is it sufficiently better than C++" then you have to
specify the field you're interested in.

If Ada does everything C++ does and more, but you don't need the "and
more", that doesn't mean Ada is not as good as C++. It just means
they're equally good *for you*.

C++ is clearly an awful language for drawing pie-charts, compared to
Excel. So?

-- 
Darren New / Senior MTS & Free Radical / Invisible Worlds Inc.
       San Diego, CA, USA (PST).  Cryptokeys on demand.
          Only a WIMP puts wallpaper on his desktop.