Re: terminate applications

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Well, I'm not really trying to troll here - just make a point that if C 
has an answer to a problem and other languages have a similar answer to 
the problem, why shouldn't Ada? If the features in Ada won't do 
something useful that is done in other languages, then maybe we need to 
add a feature that *will* do it.

Here's an analogy: Suppose you own a hardware store and someone comes in 
and says "I want to buy a hammer..." and your response is "Well, hammers 
aren't really safe or the best way to do something. We supply these 
marvelous self-tapping screws with a special, high precision, motorized 
driving unit that will securely fasten these wonderful, furniture-grade 
boards together....". The customer insists "But all I want to do is tack 
down some loose boards on my dog house in the back yard...." You say 
"Well, my competitor across the street sells hammers and nails - go buy 
them from him and then come back here and get my fine furniture grade 
boards..." What is the customer likely to do? Go across the street and 
take *all* of his business there.

If Ada wants to be competitive against C, C++, Java or whatever else is 
out there, it has to be focused on customer needs. It can't be dependent 
on sending the customer to the competitor for features it can't or won't 
support, or the customer just starts to wonder why he is bothering with 
Ada when he has to have the other product anyway in order to get the job 
done. Ada needs to provide "One-Stop Shopping" so a developer doesn't 
need to look elsewhere for an answer.

MDC



Arnaud Charlet wrote:
> All right, this is a troll, so I won't feed the troll, and this will be
> my second and last answer on this issue.
> 
> 
>>If you can do something like this in C, why shouldn't Ada have the same 
>>facility?
> 
> 
> How do you know that "exit" is implemented in C ? It may well be
> implemented in Ada, or Assembly, or Fortran, or ?
> 
> C uses a binding to the exit function, doing a #include <stdlib.h>,
> or extern void exit(); (int parameter intentionally omitted), and Ada
> does the same, there is absolutely no difference except in your mind.
> 
> And as you will notice, there is no need to say "you can always build a
> binding", since the binding is already done, and is as trivial as the C
> binding.
> 
> The mistake is to try to put one language against another, rather than
> associating languages with one another seamlessly.
> 
> Arno
> 


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Marin David Condic
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