Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...

[Craig Franck <clfranck@worldnet.att.net>]

jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) wrote:
>In article <4ur9ii$7r4@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net> Craig Franck <clfranck@worldnet.att.net> writes:

>> It's first spefication, I believe, was DOD-1. This
>
>??? Where'd you come up with this one???  The original Ada did have a
>Mil Std reference # (in addition to ANSI and ISO #s), which happened
>to be 1815 (year or Ada's birth).

Norman Cohen's fine book on the Ada programing langauage states
that "In April 1975, the Higher Order Language Working Group
issued a set of sample requirements for DoD-1". I clearly 
miss spoke when I called this a specification. The working
requirement were refined and given the names (colorfully
enough) Strawman, Woodenman, Tinman, Ironman, and Steeleman.
These requirement led up to the Ada programming language, but you 
are right, these should not be confused with official standardized 
specifications.

I have often wondered if Jack Cooper picked Ada Augusta to
name the language after because, while she is considered by some 
to be the first programmer, all the other names in the 
requirements were masculine. If so, the name might be a pun of 
sorts, like C++ "incrementing" C's capabilities.

>Ada is technically _very_ good (nothing to do with software is
>excellent) and I have said in the past that the worst thing to happen
>to Ada was the government.  Because of all these goofy perception
>problems.  Of course, the flip side is that it wouldn't have happened
>without the government either.

Yes, to the informed many misinfored perceptions appear goofy!
I think if more books on Ada were available to the general 
programming public, these perceptions would change. In a recent
trip to a book store I counted 280 books with C/C++ in the title
(it's a big Barnes & Noble) and just 4 on Ada. Only 1 of which
had Ada 95 in the title. Fortunately there are abundant resources on
the Internet.

I think it's true that with Ada, having been a Pascal programmer
helps you to master the syntax. One of the complaints I have heard
from C/C++ programmers is that you have to write procedure or function; why 
can't the compiler just figure out what you are doing from the
syntax? This I think lies at the hart of some of peoples dislike for
the wordiness of the language. I have never understood the use
of the keyword "is" to help the parse, and why attributes are 
implemented the way they are, but after you have learned the language, the
syntactic style is much less important than what you can do with
it. I think that multitasking being implemented at the language
level as well as module linkage, is a big plus and separates it 
from C/C++. It comes with an over head, and I am not making any
judgements as to which language is better by saying this.

Craig
-----
clfranck@worldnet.att.net
Manchester, NH
There are no electrons...