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: 103376,971aa11c293c3db1 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-07-19 10:31:12 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!east1.newsfeed.sprint-canada.net!news.storm.ca!nnrp1.tor.metronet.ca!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3B57195E.A3A3FED@home.com> From: "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Windows NT 5.0; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada The Best Language? References: <5be89e2f.0107170838.c71ad61@posting.google.com> <5be89e2f.0107180235.726d46a8@posting.google.com> <9j3rrd$g71$1@s1.read.news.oleane.net> <5be89e2f.0107181300.4b4e93d7@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 17:31:11 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.96.47.195 NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 11:31:11 MDT Organization: MetroNet Communications Group Inc. Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10264 Date: 2001-07-19T17:31:11+00:00 List-Id: codesavvy wrote: > Brian Rogoff wrote in message news:... > > On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Jean-Pierre Rosen wrote: > > > From: "codesavvy" >.......snip........ > > Ada has built in concurrency, and since it isn't a !@#$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