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: 1014db,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b19fa62fdce575f9 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 108717,ef0074ec236ba6e3 X-Google-Attributes: gid108717,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-12-01 21:08:41 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!zip.eecs.umich.edu!panix!cmcl2!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!thecourier.cims.nyu.edu!nobody From: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.programming,comp.lang.c++,comp.object Subject: Re: Why don't large companies use Ada? Date: 1 Dec 1994 17:29:13 -0500 Organization: Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences Message-ID: <3blinp$8dm@gnat.cs.nyu.edu> References: <1994Nov29.154220.27952@cognos.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: gnat.cs.nyu.edu Xref: bga.com comp.lang.ada:8163 comp.lang.c:32919 comp.programming:5549 comp.lang.c++:39210 comp.object:9289 Date: 1994-12-01T17:29:13-05:00 List-Id: Gareth's idea that knowing C means that learning C++ is easy, and his view that Ada is a much more complex language than C++ are laughable, but the programming language field is one in which people seem happy to say stupid things about programming lanuages (in all directions) without knowing anything about the languages they are talking about. What is for sure is that most students coming out of universities are woefully unequipped for writing serious, realiable software. THe idea that knowing how to hack around in C or Basic (or any other language for that matter) has anything to do with serious software engineering only goes to show the lack of awareness. Sometimes I wonder whether, regardless of the language you intend to use, you would do better to specifically hire people who do *not* know the language so that they don't bring a load of misconceptions to the table. Maybe the best thing is if they don't know any languages at all. The teaching of programming is often so bad that it has definitely overall negative value. The arguments that one should use language X because that's what everyone knows and what systems support most easily etc. is a recipe for using obsolete technology. For years, Fortran marched on in the US under this banner. I am happy to see technical points in comparison of languages, but this argument is non-technical and in the long run less relevant than people imagine. Note that the only technical point that Gareth made was that somehow all the strong typing etc. in Ada would make people's life harder, which is of course nonsense, and presumably is nonsense borne of ignorance. It is amazing how programming languages get characterized by second hand opinions. For example, looking at the cross-posting of this thread, how many of out out there don't know COBOL at all, but are sure that it is extremely verbose and this is one of its disadvantages. Totally false of course, COBOL programs are often considerably more compact than Pascal programs doing similar things because of some very nice concise COBOL grammar. Also of course totally irrelevant, counting the number of characters on the page is NOT the way to determine the best language (otherwise we would automatically conclude that a language that disallowed comments was best :-)