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=0.5 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,11414a19b0e4a97a X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nx01.iad01.newshosting.com!newshosting.com!198.186.194.249.MISMATCH!transit3.readnews.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!transit4.readnews.com!textspool1.readnews.com!news-out.readnews.com!postnews3.readnews.com!not-for-mail Message-Id: <4c1e0d26$0$2393$4d3efbfe@news.sover.net> From: "Peter C. Chapin" Subject: Re: Advice on selling Ada to a C shop Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 08:46:58 -0400 References: <101bf8f3-b823-45ee-9afd-40cbafb4b7a9@t26g2000prt.googlegroups.com> User-Agent: KNode/0.10.9 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit Organization: SoVerNet (sover.net) NNTP-Posting-Host: e9f7438d.news.sover.net X-Trace: DXC=_3 Nasser M. Abbasi wrote: > Showing examples are one excellent way to illustrate Ada advantage over C. Putting Ada up against C seems so unfair... like kicking a man when he's down! A comparison of Ada and C++ seems more appropriate. I realize that's not what the original poster is talking about. For myself personally I became a believer when I realized Ada's various rules and restrictions were forcing my programs into a better design. In order to "work around" the Ada compiler's "annoying" messages I often had to refactor my design... sometimes more than once while I was learning the basics of the language. The funny thing... once that refactoring was complete I was left with a program that was far superior to what I was originally trying to write. As an added bonus it worked too! It didn't take too many experiences like that to convince me that Ada is good language. These days I regard the language as a kind of automated expert looking over my shoulder and helping to keep me from wandering off into the tall weeds. Unfortunately it's probably hard to demonstrate that sort of thing. One really needs to build some Ada programs. The key is convincing the team to keep an open mind during their initial experimentation with the language. If they jump to the conclusion that Ada is pointlessly fussy ("typical military language" etc), all might be lost. Peter