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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: fjh@mundook.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/06/28 Message-ID: <4r19k9$b05@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 162624479 references: <4q8fbo$701@red.interact.net.au> <874508446wnr@t-cubed.demon.co.uk> <4qjddi$26e@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> organization: Comp Sci, University of Melbourne newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-06-28T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes: >Fergus said: > > > From: jont@t-cubed.demon.co.uk (Jon Taylor) > > > > I suspect the reasons Ada is not more popular than it rightly > > deserves are (amongst others) :- > > > > b) Validated Ada compilers are not cheap. Using gnat is just not > > good enought for a commercial system. > > If an unvalidated C compiler is good enough for a commercial system, > why wouldn't an unvalidated Ada compiler be good enough? > >This is a bit misleading. First there are many validated C compilers (you >could have made your point by saying C++, but not C, which has a formal >validation procedure comparable to that of Ada, though perhaps the test >suite is not quite so comprehensive). So how cheap are *validated* C compilers? Are they significantly cheaper than validated Ada compilers? And of the people who choose C instead of Ada because validated Ada compilers are too expensive, how many of them use validated C compilers and how many use unvalidated C compilers? >Second, the issue of whether GNAT is or is not "good enought" for a >commercial system is not particuarly dependent on validation anyway. Yes, that's my point. For many purposes, validation is not important, and if e.g. Borland or Microsoft C/C++ is OK, then an unvalidated Ada compiler ought to be OK too. It seems to me that Ada and C/C++ are being held to different standards here. -- Fergus Henderson | "I have always known that the pursuit WWW: | of excellence is a lethal habit" PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3 | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.