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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 108717,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid108717,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-11-30 09:40:03 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!warwick!not-for-mail From: csusb@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Jules) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.programming,comp.lang.c++,comp.object Subject: Re: Why don't large companies use Ada? Date: 30 Nov 1994 17:39:26 -0000 Organization: University of Warwick, Coventry, UK Message-ID: <3bidce$a83@borage.csv.warwick.ac.uk> References: <1994Nov29.154220.27952@cognos.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: borage.csv.warwick.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Xref: bga.com comp.lang.ada:8097 comp.lang.c:32600 comp.programming:5501 comp.lang.c++:38953 comp.object:9177 Date: 1994-11-30T17:39:26+00:00 List-Id: In article , bromlegb@aston.ac.uk writes: >Why should they bother?? > >Given that most students coming out of college/University will have some >experience in programming some type of language Pascal, Modula-2/3, C >and possibly BASIC plus any others and also most colleges/Universities Oh come off it, nobody teaches BASIC anymore, do they? Oh, and how many of them are teaching Ada now? Quite a lot I believe. As a large proportion of those graduates know Ada, doesn't it make sense to use it? >provide courses in C, it is totally logical, and more important cost >saving to send/train employees on C++ courses, and thus program systems >in C++. > >Why? > >i) Cost. If the user has a basic knowledge of C or other programming language >then converting to C++ is relatively easy. Converting to C++ is astoundingly difficult if you want to do it well. See the thread on learning OOP for more details. Not retraining someone to use a different language to the one they learnt at university seems like the cheaper option to me. >ii) Ada's complexity. Most new users will quickly come across all Ada's *nice* >type checking, or special constructs which require a different syntax to normal. >In other languages these are not required. A language without type checking is a recipe for catastrophe. Perhaps it is C's loose type checking that has earnt it it's reputation as being the language to code in if you don't mind the odd crash every so often. >iii) Support. Virtually every computer system in the world has a C++ compiler, >and it is being updated continually. Because that is where all the money is. >Not every computer system in the world has Ada on it, plus most will not be >powerful enough to run it. Plus the cost of the respective compilers. C++ >compilers, are cheaper than Ada ones. On all if not the majority of platforms. Ever tried GNAT, the free Ada 9x compiler? Certainly GNU C++ is not cheaper than this. >iv) Libraries, Code already written and available experts. C++ has access straight >away to all the C code libraries written. Not just a few nice ones, but all >C library code ever written, one reason the famous COBOL is still around! Yes, but is it still a good reason to carry on using it, when it is perfectly possible to interface another language anyway (and it's already been done for you - most useful libraries have interfaces for many languages, and why would you want to use anything that isn't one of the 'few nice ones', when you could use a library that is much better known, and has much better support for the same purpose?) >Lots and lots of code has already been written in C++,and also any company can >go out and get any number of C++ programmers, or even C ones and train them, >whereas there are fewer Ada programmers. Before high level languages were designed, lots and lots of code was written in assembler. Once the high levels were available, everyone had to be retrained to use them. But nobody stuck to assembler, did they? >v) OS Support. All modern OS have C and C++ support for there libraries. For Ada >to access the same stuff as C and C++ someone has to write specfications for the >C and C++ code in the OS. It is not supported straight out by OS Vendors. Does this really make any difference? You just get an interface library for the OS with the compiler. Thats it - no problem. >This is just my .005 pence worth, and feel totally free to totally disagree. Have done. -- /* Julian R Hall csusb@csv.warwick.ac.uk Flames should be redirected to /dev/null - I don't know what I'm saying myself so don't expect it to make sense all the time! */