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: 103376,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,dab7d920e4340f12 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because... Date: 1996/07/30 Message-ID: <4tkfqk$duc@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 171063725 references: <31daad10.57288085@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> <31ebfbd7.330061022@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> <31EE19D1.6977@lfwc.lockheed.com> <31efe069.63062188@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> <4sopkp$dao@itfhps00.itf.hcsd.ca> <31f3c396.238311543@netline-fddi.jpl.nasa.gov> <01bb78b1$28455ec0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com> <31F613F3.2781E494@escmail.orl.mmc.com> <01bb7bf9$b89a1740$96ee6fcf@timhome2> <4tiorn$r5b@rational.rational.com> <01bb7dd3$88e808a0$96ee6fcf@timhome2> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c nntp-posting-user: ok Date: 1996-07-30T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Tim Behrendsen" writes: >You say that it is the language of choice when software failure is >liable to cause loss of life or a very large lawsuit. These >are very worthy attributes. Given that this is the case, why >isn't it being used more universally for non-mission critical >software? Speaking as someone who has used C for a long time, and is very happy with Ada (despite feeling that a few aspects, which are already far better than C, could have been better still), I would say that Ada is a very usable language for all sorts of things. It was very easy to "get my feet wet" with Ada/Ed. With GNAT (as cheap as gcc...) I am very happy indeed. What I *don't* understand is why people are puzzled by the fact that it is hard to dislodge the first occupant of a niche. (Not impossible, but hard.) Mammals didn't replace dinosaurs until after something else wiped them out. The only thing that could ever dislodge me from using MacWrite on a Macintosh to the detestable Microsoft Word was the fact that the old copy of MacWrite wouldn't run reliably on the latest system software and the department wasn't about to buy a new copy for just one user. Word may have all sorts of extra features, but I already _knew_ MacWrite, had a lot of documents in MacWrite format that I didn't want to convert, and didn't see enough advantage in switching to justify learning a new word processor _however_ good it might be. (In fact, I'm not switching to Weird, I'm switching to LaTeX, which I've already used on CMS, VMS, UNIX, and DOS ...) Similarly, I drive a 1975 car. It still works. I can't *afford* to replace it with a new model, even if a new model is better. Let me offer another example. Suppose there were a programming language which is simple, far more expressive and powerful than C, as efficient as C, with a clean GUI library that has been designed so that programs will be the *same* on UNIX-X, Windows, and Mac, in which type errors and storage allocation errors and unintentional file overwriting errors and so on were impossible, yet remained expressive and comfortable. And suppose that the implementation were free. Do you suppose it would take the world by storm? Well, _I_ use it, but no, Clean (for that is its name), has _not_ taken the world by storm, and I don't expect it will. Conversely, the students I've supervised who've used Microsoft Access for projects tend to be mildly to *extremely* unhappy with the language side of it, but that doesn't hurt it in the market, does it? -- Fifty years of programming language research, and we end up with C++ ??? Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/~ok; RMIT Comp.Sci.