Re: Ada The Best Language?

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com>]

codesavvy wrote:
> Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com> wrote in message news:<Pine.BSF.4.21.0107181114410.3159-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>...
> > On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Jean-Pierre Rosen wrote:
> > > From: "codesavvy" <codesavvy@aol.com>
>.......snip........
> > Ada has built in concurrency, and since it isn't a !@#$ing flat language
> > like C++ (you may nest function definitions, and you have lexical scope)
> > its a lot easier (IMO of course) to use Ada concurrency than some hacked
> > on thread library in C++. That's a big plus over C++ IMO.
> 
> I agree with you.  I really do like the Ada 95 concurrancy model.
> However, I doubt if the gain in productivity is substantial but I
> could be convinced otherwise.  

What soooo many people keep overlooking in this "productivity issue"
is the _TOTAL_ cost. This has been repeatedly been pointed out by others
here, but many C/C++ zealots seem to fail to completely grasp this issue. 
The amount of time spent in a debugger for Ada is small. The amount of
"weird bug" issues is also extremely small for Ada code in general.

I have spent a major part of my career chasing down other peoples' (and
in some cases my own ;-) memory corruption problems. Sure, it was very
efficient to slap together that C/C++ project. But when you add all that
time to find out where the memory corruption came from, and all those
future bug reports that eventually required investigation, Ada wins 
hands down on a comparison comparison basis. Where do you want to spend
your time? In the debugger, or crafting new code?

The challenge is to get everyone to recognize that you don't measure 
productivity in terms of delivering the final product. Measure it in
terms of delivering the "_perfected_ product". Then consider the cost
of maintaining it after it is delivered/installed.

Another way to look at this issue is that the Ada compiler uses CPU
cycles to spot programming errors for you. Conversely, the C/C++
compiler only looks for gross errors, but otherwise blesses your
code with the ability to "blow away the whole leg", if that is the
instruction you have given. And with automatic type promotion etc.,
C/C++ leaves a few surprises in store for good measure.

Anyway, the whole issue keeps coming down to the point of how you
want to measure "productivity". You need to expand your view on that
IMHO.

-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://members.home.net/ve3wwg