What is Ada used for???

What is Ada used for???

[Sean Roehnelt]

I'm taking my first programming class at school, and want to know where Ada
fits in to the grand scheme of things....

shouldn't I be learning c++

isn't Ada old and outdated?

I don't know, and my instructor hasn't been able to clearify this for me at
all.

thanks,
sean

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Robert Dewar]

"What makes you think that you should be learning C++? Just because it is
the current "in" language?"



Actually my bookstore seems to think that Java is the current "in"
language, you can hardly see a C++ book there any more, they are
hidden behind stacks of Java books.

But that's not a particularly good reason to learn Java either. Who knows
what language-du-jour will be when you graduate.

The critical thing is to learn fundamental programming principles, including
how to design appropriate abstractions and algorithms for complex programming
tasks.

Ada 95 is certainly well suited to learning these principles.

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Michael Feldman]

In article <AE817A13-1E0BE@206.107.67.30>,
Sean Roehnelt <roehnelt@csulb.edu> wrote:

>Can I use Ada to make application for Windows, MocOS, OS2, UNIX, BeOS,
>etc...? 

With the exception of BeOS, the answer is yes, indeed. No Ada yet for
BeOS.

>Does GUI bring up a whole other issue that ties me to a language?

Not really. It is quite easy to call GUI tools from Ada 95 programs.
The various compilers for those systems you named all come with
"bindings" to the respective GUI toolboxes. An Ada binding is a set of
interfaces that let you call those GUI routines from Ada, whatever
the GUI was originally written in.
>
>Is the programming language I program in independent of what programs can
>be used for? Does it depend on my development package?

Not really. Most current languages are fully general purpose. In a sense,
the application depends on the development package. If you need, for
example, a Windows 95 GUI library, you won't usually find it on UN*X.
Other than that dependency on platform-specific libraries, just about
anything can be written in just about any language.

Most of us on this group just think it's likely to be easier and
more reliable with Ada.:-)
>
>Like I said I'm just getting started with programming,

Welcome aboard! You're just like most of my own students... and yes,
they start off with Ada, too.
>
>sean
>
Mike Feldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) 
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman
------------------------------------------------------------------------
       Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WWW: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ or http://info.acm.org/sigada/education
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Aron Felix Gurski]

Sean Roehnelt wrote:
> 
> I'm taking my first programming class at school, and want to know where Ada
> fits in to the grand scheme of things....
> 
> shouldn't I be learning c++

What makes you think that you should be learning C++? Just because it is
the current "in" language? 

At this stage in your studies, you are *much* better off learning Ada 95
than one of the C/C++ dialects. Ada 95 (and other languages, like
Modula-2, Modula-3 and Eiffel, by the way) are far better at teaching
you the discipline that you will need to learn in order to become a
*good* programmer. My own programs have all sorts of checks in them to
make sure that none of the other programs running have corrupted my
programs' data. Whenever I have found that a program *has* corrupted my
programs, I have *invariably* found that it was a program with a C
run-time library in it. (Both C and C++ programmers *still* haven't
learnt to use pointers properly, and occasionally have uninitialized
pointers that accidentally point into other programs' memory -- and then
start writing there. This is not to say that it is not possible to write
good software in C or C++; it just doesn't seem to happen all that
often.)

> isn't Ada old and outdated?

In as much as the new Ada 95 standard became a standard in 1995, I
wouldn't exactly call it "old and outdated". 

> 
> I don't know, and my instructor hasn't been able to clearify this for me at
> all.
> 
> thanks,
> sean

From someone who graduated 25 years ago: good luck with your studies!

					-- Aron

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Jason Smith]

C++ is popular in industry, but exactly why escapes me for the moment. 
Part of the reason, I am sure, is that it is nearly 100% compatible with C.
 But it also carries with it many of the problems that are inherent in C -
namely, it provides little protection against mistakes made by the
programmer.  It takes some experience in C programming to know what I am
talking about, but any C/C++ programmer can tell you that debugging a C
program is no trivial task.   Typical mistakes the programmer might make
lead to out-of-bound array indexes, pointers which point to invalid spots
in memory, and using an assignment operator ("=") when a boolean comparison
was intended ("==").  You know that something is not right when you see
more tools for finding memory leaks and resource leaks in C++ programs than
the number of compilers on the market.

C++ is more difficult to read than most languages, and this makes it
difficult to maintain the code over a number of years, when significant
changes must be made by people who never met the original programmer.  C++
projects also tend to ship with more bugs than other languages, including
Ada.  The readability may adversely affect code inspections.

One other BIG problem with C++ is the volatility of the standard.  This is
a really BIG problem when you consider code maintainance costs over a
period of, say, ten years.  In the few years that C++ has been around, the
committee has revamped the standard 4 times.  This gets everyone to market
quickly, but it leaves a lot of flavors of C++ hanging around.  Our
knowledge of good programming practice has changed only slightly in the
past five years.  Why couldn't they take a little more time and come up
with something that would last at least that long before it is superceded
by the next version?

So, we come to Ada.  It is decidedly unpopular in the industry (except the
DOD, where it is mandated), though I feel this is due to extremely bad
marketing.  Ada was designed for high reliability systems, to promote good
programming practice and architecture based design philosophy.  It has
features that let you get close to the machine, just like C++ does, and it
has built in language constructs that support multitasking, which C++ does
not (they are add ons to the language, and thus non-standard between
operating systems in C++).  

Ada uses strong type checking to prevent the programmer from doing silly,
stupid things that might cause the system to crash unexpectedly.  C++
encourages doing silly, stupid things - it is sometimes the only way to get
things done.  Ada is designed to be as easy to read as possible, and as
easy to maintain as possible.  

The first specification for Ada was released in 1983, and the newest
specification was released in 1995.  That is 12 years between revisions. 
The next revision will not occur until sometime in the next century.  You
see, a lot of very bright people sat down and thought long and hard about
what they really wanted the language to accomplish, and how exactly they
should get it to accomplish these things.  These people were, by the way,
paid a lot of money to do this - Ada was not developed in someone's
basement in their spare time.  The result is a very clean, concise language
that does just what it is advertised to be able to do.  So, Ada is a stable
language, unlike C++, Basic, and Pascal (Delphi), which change on average
once every 18 months or so.

In case you were wondering about efficiency, Ada was intended to be used in
embedded systems, so it is every bit as fast as C or C++.  In some cases it
has proven to be significantly faster than hand coded assembly language (I
am not making this up).

Oh, and just to drive home that Ada is a one-language solution, Ada can
compile directly into Java applets.  Applets are interpreted, so the Ada
code runs at the same slow speed as Java, but you can turn around and
compile the same Ada code into your machine dependent applications, at C++
speeds!  Let's see you do that with Java.

As far as school is concerned, Ada is an excellent first language.  It
encourages thoughtful, measured programming and the development of truly
elegant code.  By the time you get out of college, if people are still
using C++, you will be lucky if it looks much like the C++ of today.  More
likely, though, Microsoft will have pushed Visual Basic hard enough that it
will be the language of choice for most programming chores.  C++ has a
longer development cycle and requires more specialized learning than Basic,
and management is more concerned with the bottom line than anything else. 
I guess what I am trying to say is that it is more important to learn to
program than what the language du jour is.  Concentrate on structuring your
thoughts and developing good programming practices and habits.  Learn
software architecting, evolutionary programming, and how to talk to your
customer.  These are more important than language anyway.

But when you spend 14 hour days for three weeks cursing your microprocessor
emulator for an intermittent fault - because it "can't be my C program" -
and you finally realize that you are indexing memory you never allocated
through an invalid array index, overwriting data at random in the process,
you may wish for a fleeting moment that there was something better than
C/C++.  

There are some very good papers comparing C++ (and other languages) and
Ada.  A colleague of mine recently wrote one (it is not yet published).  I
read it, took some time to study the language, and now I am convinced Ada
is one of the better kept secrets in the industry today.  Go to
http://www.infoseek.com and search on the keyword "Ada," and see what you
think.  Some of the results are ambiguous, but most reach the startling
conclusion that Ada is a better development language than C++.


Sean Roehnelt <roehnelt@csulb.edu> wrote in article
<AE813FAA-56A9E@206.107.67.23>...
> I'm taking my first programming class at school, and want to know where
Ada
> fits in to the grand scheme of things....
> 
> shouldn't I be learning c++
> 
> isn't Ada old and outdated?
> 
> I don't know, and my instructor hasn't been able to clearify this for me
at
> all.
> 
> thanks,
> sean
> 
> 
> 

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Robert S. White]

In article <01bbb6e2$6385d540$23b2fd86@jssmith.csu891.sandia.gov>, 
jssmith@sandia.gov says...

>...snip...a lot of well thought out comments...

  Thanks for taking the time to list out a lot of well thought out
observations about the relative differences between these software 
development tools.  I tried to cut it to the quick.  I saved your post as
a keeper.  Always handy to have stuff like this when committees of new and 
experienced personnel are making decisions.  Seems like we do this every 3 
5 years....Ada keeps winning.
___________________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White                    -- an embedded systems software engineer
WhiteR@CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US -- It's long, but I pay for it!

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Robert S. White]

In article <AE813FAA-56A9E@206.107.67.23>, roehnelt@csulb.edu says...
>
>I'm taking my first programming class at school, and want to know where Ada
>fits in to the grand scheme of things....

   Avionics (big catch all for instruments & navigation), flight control 
software, engine control software (rockets & jets), GPS satellites, GPS/INS 
systems are things I personally know about.  I heard reports that some Swiss 
bankers use it.  The complete list and possibilities is quite large.  There
have not been a lot of high volume general purpose desktop applications 
(word processors and spreadsheets) written in Ada.  Think about where 
software bugs are tolerated and where they are not. 

  Ada in general is very well suited for programming in the large with a 
team of software engineers.

___________________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White                    -- an embedded systems software engineer
WhiteR@CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US -- It's long, but I pay for it!

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <53i2h6$cku@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>, WhiteR@CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US (Robert S. White) writes:
> In article <AE813FAA-56A9E@206.107.67.23>, roehnelt@csulb.edu says...
>>
>>I'm taking my first programming class at school, and want to know where Ada
>>fits in to the grand scheme of things....
> 
>    Avionics (big catch all for instruments & navigation), flight control 
> software, engine control software (rockets & jets), GPS satellites, GPS/INS 
> systems are things I personally know about.  I heard reports that some Swiss 
> bankers use it.  The complete list and possibilities is quite large.  There
> have not been a lot of high volume general purpose desktop applications 
> (word processors and spreadsheets) written in Ada.  Think about where 
> software bugs are tolerated and where they are not. 
> 
>   Ada in general is very well suited for programming in the large with a 
> team of software engineers.

Ada is also quite useful for programs which will exist for a long
time but will only be revised very infrequently.  Even if changes
to a program are made by the original author, it is quite possible
that the workings of the program will be forgotten by the time the
change is to be made.  Due to the nature of the language, Ada has
a greater chance than most languages of catching errors due to
unfamiliarity with the program being changed.

In the line of "personal programs", I did not use Ada for the program
which handled the invitation list for my wedding, since reusing it is
not my plan. I _did_ use Ada for the program which sends messages to
my pager in response to certain events, since I revise that program
every 3 years or so.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

"Sean Roehnelt" <roehnelt@csulb.edu> writes:
>Can I use Ada to make application for
>	Windows,
	Yes.  Win 3.x, Win 95, Win NT, DOS

>	MocOS,
	MacOS?
	Yes.	(GNAT + MachTen).

>	OS2,
	OS/2?
	Yes.

>	UNIX,
	Yes.

>	BeOS,
	Don't know, haven't got any here.

>	etc...?
	Yes for OpenVMS, and for some IBM operating systems,
	and a lot of things you've never heard of.

>	Does GUI bring up a whole other issue that ties me to a language?

There is *one* and only one *popular* language around which has a
de-facto-standard multiplatform GUI library, and that's Java.  Since there
are Ada->Java-code compilers available, there is no limitation on Ada _there_.

There are multiplatform-but-not-de-facto-standard GUI libraries for
C and C++: wxWindows and Garnet spring to mind
Lisp and Scheme: wxWindows and Garnet sprint to mind
and there is a GUI toolkit called "Tk" which is accessible from many
languages including C, C++, CAML, Scheme (Stk), _and Ada_.

In any case, a well-structured program will devote a fairly small fraction
of its code to platform-specific GUI operations, and you can write 5% of
your program in C and the other 95% in Ada, if you want to.

>Is the programming language I program in independent of what programs can
>be used for? Does it depend on my development package?

What do you mean "development _package_"?
Some so-called Interactive Development Environments tie you to a specific
language, although it is worth noting that not all are.

Some languages are good for writing device drivers (low level system
specific hackery).  Some languages are good for writing business software
that must deal with formatted files and big numbers.  Some languages are
good for distributed programming.  Some languages are good for parallel
and concurrent programming.  Some languages are good at object orientation.
Some languages are good at non-object-oriented styles.

Ada is good for all of them!

-- 
Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote!
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.

Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Richard Riehle]

I am meeting more and more DoD managers and contractors who, at the
management level, are concerned with whether Ada has the staying
power required for them to select it for important projects. While
many of them agree that Ada is probably superior to C++, that superiority
may prove to be of marginal value when weighed against the availability
of tools for C++, programmers in C++, and the myriad of other resources
for C++.  

These managers are asking whether Ada will be around for the next ten
years, and if it is, whether there will be cost-effective tools and
compilers to make Ada a good business decision.  They are convinced that
C++ will not go away.  And they believe that C++, with all of its
liabilities, will continue to get better.  This is a powerful argument.

One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three
Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that
the field has narrowed.  Now name three software companies who provide
testing tools for Ada.  What about three providers of configuration
management tools?  What about other third-party tools?

It is significant, I think, that so many compiler publishers are
paying attention to the need for support of Microsoft Win32 platforms
such as NT. But what about the other software companies who might be
creating tools that work with these compilers?  

Perhaps I am simply encountering a lot of such criticism because of the
kind of work I do.  Maybe there are lots more program managers out there
who are enthusiastically embracing Ada.  Someone tell me, please, that
I am simply worrying from too small a sample size.

Richard Riehle

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Robert Dewar]

You said

"These managers are asking whether Ada will be around for the next ten
years, and if it is, whether there will be cost-effective tools and
compilers to make Ada a good business decision.  They are convinced that
C++ will not go away.  And they believe that C++, with all of its
liabilities, will continue to get better.  This is a powerful argument.
"

I can give a VERY convincing presentation here from a corporate point
of view of why Ada 95 definitely will be around for the long term, and
will continue to improve rapidly. I gave such a presentation for the
Lockheed Martin folks wrt the Aegis program. This is quite an ACT
specific presentation, so nt really suitable for general publication.

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Robert B. Love]

In <Pine.GSO.3.95.961020165834.4990E-100000@nunic.nu.edu> Richard 
Riehle wrote:
> I am meeting more and more DoD managers and contractors who, at the
> management level, are concerned with whether Ada has the staying
> power required for them to select it for important projects. While
> many of them agree that Ada is probably superior to C++, that 
superiority
> may prove to be of marginal value when weighed against the 
availability
> of tools for C++, programmers in C++, and the myriad of other 
resources
> for C++.  

Where are the success stories for C++ in large DoD efforts?  Since I 
don't
do C++ I don't see them.  Are there any?  We know of Ada success 
stories.

I'm hearing rumors of a large C++ "national systems" program that is 
failing.
Program is way behind schedule and now the gov't is questioning the 
contractor.
I don't know the cause of the failure or if its recoverable.  But this 
could 
be a C++ failure that should be highlighted.  

We need to stress to these managers that there are Ada success stories.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Love, rlove@neosoft.com (local)        MIME & NeXT Mail OK
rlove@raptor.rmnug.org  (permanent)        PGP key available
----------------------------------------------------------------

Re: What is Ada used for???

[Jin Xue Kuang]

Michael Feldman (mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu) wrote:
: In article <AE817A13-1E0BE@206.107.67.30>,
: Sean Roehnelt <roehnelt@csulb.edu> wrote:

: >Does GUI bring up a whole other issue that ties me to a language?

: Not really. It is quite easy to call GUI tools from Ada 95 programs.
: The various compilers for those systems you named all come with
: "bindings" to the respective GUI toolboxes. An Ada binding is a set of
: interfaces that let you call those GUI routines from Ada, whatever
: the GUI was originally written in.
: >
: >Is the programming language I program in independent of what programs can
: >be used for? Does it depend on my development package?

Hi Mr. Feldman,
   I just start learning ADA for my new project in my company.  I bought
both of your ADA 95 books which are excellent learning tools.  I am
currently working on how to make a ODBC driver connection from ADA
to Access Database. I can do it in Visual C++ and Borland C++ by
making SQL calls directly after ODBC drivers are loaded.  Since I
am new to ADA, I wonder what I need to do to make the same kind of
ODBC connections from ADA.  I appreciate your advices or point me
to books in the market that specifically deal with Windows programming
through ADA.  Thank you very much.

: Mike Feldman
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Michael B. Feldman -  chair, SIGAda Education Working Group
: Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
: The George Washington University -  Washington, DC 20052 USA
: 202-994-5919 (voice) - 202-994-0227 (fax) 
: http://www.seas.gwu.edu/faculty/mfeldman
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
:        Pork is all that money the government gives the other guys.
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------
: WWW: http://lglwww.epfl.ch/Ada/ or http://info.acm.org/sigada/education
: ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <Pine.GSO.3.95.961020165834.4990E-100000@nunic.nu.edu>, Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu> writes:

> One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three
> Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that
> the field has narrowed.  Now name three software companies who provide
> testing tools for Ada.  What about three providers of configuration
> management tools?  What about other third-party tools?

Third party tools like LINT  for C ?

Name three aircraft vendors.

Presumably you were successful, but the field is much narrower
than it was in 1925.  I am not convinced it means aircraft are
a dying breed.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Stanley R. Allen]

Richard Riehle wrote:
> 
> I am meeting more and more DoD managers and contractors who, at the
> management level, are concerned with whether Ada has the staying
> power required for them to select it for important projects. While
> many of them agree that Ada is probably superior to C++, that superiority
> may prove to be of marginal value when weighed against the availability
> of tools for C++, programmers in C++, and the myriad of other resources
> for C++.
> 
> These managers are asking whether Ada will be around for the next ten
> years, and if it is, whether there will be cost-effective tools and
> compilers to make Ada a good business decision.  They are convinced that
> C++ will not go away.

Yes, it's a pitiful shame that these ideas whirl through such
influential minds.  DoD managers and contractors need to
understand the the trend is away from C++ in the commercial
realm; something that seems implied in a lot of public
statements by the commercial development community these
days.

For example, the latest issue of Windows Tech Journal (Nov 96)
has an editorial that reports the results of a private
conference involving high-level representativies from
big commercial vendors (Microsoft included); C++ is
described as a dead issue; "it's like leaded gas, you'll
still be able to get it, but it won't be the main thing";
its role will be limited to the back end of the process
(the output of a RAD tool, for example).  Essentially,
they seem to be saying that C++ will be more of an
assembly language, at least for Windows development.

The editor goes on to say that he doesn't mourn the 
passing of C++, after all, "there's something seriously
wrong with a language that spawns a sub-industry in
pointer-debugging tools and object-code checkers"
(not an exact quote).

These sentiments seem to be echoed in almost every journal
I read (especially the "letters" sections) -- programmers are
fed up with C++, and generally only endure it if the code is
generated for them in some way.  They aren't programming "in"
C++ so much as they are programming in the "applications
framework".  And there aren't many of these frameworks for
non-GUI-based projects.

No wonder there is such a mad rush to Java -- even though
Java has yet to prove itself in one major application.
Overnight a whole industry has grown up around this new
language, and millions of dollars are being bet on its
success.  And I believe that at least half of the reason
for its popularity is that developers have been looking
for a way out of the C++ trap. (The other half would be
JVM support in commercial web browsers).

If Java wins the commercial development language war,
which looks very possible, and the DoD decided to go
with C++ because of all of the commercial support you
mention, then the DoD will be the big loser because in
a few years all that commercial support will disappear.

> And they believe that C++, with all of its
> liabilities, will continue to get better.
> This is a powerful argument.

Except, of course, that every time C++ gets better,
it gets worse!  ;)

> 
> One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three
> Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that
> the field has narrowed.  Now name three software companies who provide
> testing tools for Ada.  What about three providers of configuration
> management tools?  What about other third-party tools?

But you should ask them how many C++ vendors there are.
I can think of three -- Microsoft, Borland, and Symantec.
Now think of ten; not so easy.  I know it's easier to
think of ten test vendors for C++ products -- C++ programs
need more tests!!

So, is C++ really that popular, or is it just backed by
heavy muscle?  And if that backing diminishes, whence
goes C++?  My programmer friends over the commercial
wall say that Microsoft is really more committed to
Visual Basic -- all the hot new stuff is introduced there
first, later migrates to C++.  I'm sure Borland feels
that way about Delphi -- proprietary technology will
lock developers in to vendor-specific languages and tools.
So, C++ will play second fiddle to VB and Delphi.  And
the same thing will happen to Java as well, witness
Microsoft J++.

Ask the DoD contracting manager if she wants the missile
system developed in Visual Basic -- after all, the newest,
neatest, and largest collection of tools are only available
for that platform.


Stanley Allen (speaking for myself)
s_allen@hso.link.com
-- Proposal for CORBA 3.0: The Acronym Repository

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[whiting_ms@corning.com (Matt Whiting)]

In article <dewar.845905352@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> 
> I can give a VERY convincing presentation here from a corporate point
> of view of why Ada 95 definitely will be around for the long term, and
> will continue to improve rapidly. I gave such a presentation for the
> Lockheed Martin folks wrt the Aegis program. This is quite an ACT
> specific presentation, so nt really suitable for general publication.
> 

Any chance of getting the essence of the argument in a "de-ACTed" and
"de-militarized" form?

I downloaded and took a look at the ce960222.ppt presentation discussed here
recently, and it is one of the better presentations I've yet encountered.
However, it really was quite military oriented and probably wouldn't impress
most corporate execs in non-defense companies.

Matt

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[William Clodius]

Stanley R. Allen wrote:
> <snip> 
> But you should ask them how many C++ vendors there are.
> I can think of three -- Microsoft, Borland, and Symantec.
> Now think of ten; not so easy.  I know it's easier to
> think of ten test vendors for C++ products -- C++ programs
> need more tests!!
> <snip>

I suggest a visit to Nullstone's list of compiler companies

http://www.nullstone.com/htmls/companies/companies.htm

It lists

Language	# Vendors
Ada 		6
Basic		3
C++ 		30
C		50+
Cobol		4
Fortran 77&90	15
Java		2
Lisp		2
Modula 2	1
Pascal		3
PL/1		1

Note the C/C++ vendors may be highly agressive in listing their wares, I
know of Fortran, Lisp, and Modula 2 vendors not represented on the list,
and some list only their C/C++ compilers and not those for other
languages, but I suspect that Ada's are also highly agressive.

Note also that different vendors may share different front or back ends.

Still I suspect that any reasonable person would agree that the number
of Ada vendors is significantly less thatn the number of C++ vendors.

-- 

William B. Clodius		Phone: (505)-665-9370
Los Alamos National Laboratory	Email: wclodius@lanl.gov
Los Alamos, NM 87545

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Richard Riehle]

On 21 Oct 1996, Robert B. Love wrote:

> Where are the success stories for C++ in large DoD efforts?  Since I 
> don't do C++ I don't see them.  Are there any?  We know of Ada success 
> stories.

  Good question, Robert.  First, let me re-affirm, for those who do
  not know me, that I am a long-standing Ada advocate. The questions
  raised in my original post were intended to raise some discussion,
  not to sound a death knell for Ada.  If I thought Ada was moribund,
  you can be certain I would not be doing what I do every day. 

  As to your question, I frequently run into DoD projects that are
  being developed in C++.  And, to my horror, someone recently told
  me that a missile system I thought was being developed in Ada
  (originally was being programmed in Ada) is now flying on software
  coded in  C++.  Unfortunately, this is a DoD project and I need to
  be somewhat circumspect in discussing it.  So that is all I will say.
  If someone with more authority than I have wants to talk about it,
  I would like to see it brought up here.

  Richard Riehle

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Andrew Dunstan]

William Clodius (wclodius@lanl.gov) wrote:

: Still I suspect that any reasonable person would agree that the number
: of Ada vendors is significantly less thatn the number of C++ vendors.

The number of smart people is significantly less than the number of
not so smart people. So we should use not so smart programmers because
there are lots of tools around for fixing their mistakes, right?

Or am I missing something here? :-)

cheers

andrew

--

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Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Poutanen Olavi]

In article <326FCA54.167E@lanl.gov> William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov> writes:
>Stanley R. Allen wrote:

...snip
>http://www.nullstone.com/htmls/companies/companies.htm
>
>It lists
>
>Language	# Vendors
>Ada 		6
>Basic		3
>C++ 		30
>C		50+
>Cobol		4
>Fortran 77&90	15
>Java		2
>Lisp		2
>Modula 2	1
>Pascal		3
>PL/1		1
>
>Note the C/C++ vendors may be highly agressive in listing their wares, I
>know of Fortran, Lisp, and Modula 2 vendors not represented on the list,
>and some list only their C/C++ compilers and not those for other
>languages, but I suspect that Ada's are also highly agressive.

I just looked the 1996 Ada Resource Catalog and it lists in Tools section
56 vendors (I toke some dublicates away). Its Business Index has 102
entries (of which I counted c. 80 to be commercial companies).

So, the suggested 6 does not represent a good coverage of the Ada industry.

Someone also asked to list at least three Ada test tools vendors (was it in
this thread?). To help you in this a bit, and if interested to learn what
one such vendor has to offer, please take a look the URL

   http://www.testwell.sci.fi

You will find there descriptions of TBGEN (a test harnessing tool for unit
testing) and TCMON (a code coverage/execution profiling tool). There are
descriptions of some our C/C++ test tools as well...

- Olavi
-------------------- Code hard, test well! -------------------------------
Olavi Poutanen                             Email(1): olavip@cs.tut.fi
Testwell Oy (Ltd)                          Email(2): olavip@sci.fi
Hermiankatu 8                              URL: http://www.testwell.sci.fi
FIN-33720 Tampere                          Tel: +358-3-316-5464
Finland                                    Fax: +358-3-318-3311
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <326FCA54.167E@lanl.gov>, William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov> writes:

> I suggest a visit to Nullstone's list of compiler companies
> 
> http://www.nullstone.com/htmls/companies/companies.htm
> 
> It lists
> 
> Language	# Vendors
> Ada 		6
> Basic		3
> C++ 		30
> C		50+
> Cobol		4
> Fortran 77&90	15
> Java		2
> Lisp		2
> Modula 2	1
> Pascal	3
> PL/1		1
> 
> Note the C/C++ vendors may be highly agressive in listing their wares, I
> know of Fortran, Lisp, and Modula 2 vendors not represented on the list,
> and some list only their C/C++ compilers and not those for other
> languages, but I suspect that Ada's are also highly agressive.

I can name 7 Pascal vendors, so that list is certainly flawed.

> Still I suspect that any reasonable person would agree that the number
> of Ada vendors is significantly less thatn the number of C++ vendors.

What some of us (reasonable or not) might disagree about is the
interpretation of that difference.  For one thing, C++ covers a
broader spectrum of languages, while Ada has only had two standard
versions.

What might be a more reasonable metric is the number of operating
systems supported. Using only Ada 95 and giving credit for "about
to be available" one can list OS/2, Macintosh, Microsoft Windows,
VMS and Unix and those all have at least some hardware platforms
on which Ada 95 is not available (except for OS/2 which only has
one currently available hardware platform).  There is no available
Ada 95 on OS/400, MVS or HP-MPE, all of which have C++ available.

Larry Kilgallen

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[John DiCamillo]

amd001@its.maynick.com.au (Andrew Dunstan) writes:
>William Clodius (wclodius@lanl.gov) wrote:
>: Still I suspect that any reasonable person would agree that the number
>: of Ada vendors is significantly less thatn the number of C++ vendors.

>The number of smart people is significantly less than the number of
>not so smart people. So we should use not so smart programmers because
>there are lots of tools around for fixing their mistakes, right?

>Or am I missing something here? :-)

Yes.  You forget that a "bell curve" has two tails.  The number of
really really stupid people is also much less than the number of
average people.  So this must be why there are only a few companies
that cater to them. :-)

GDR (Grinning, Ducking, and Running)

-- 
    ciao,
    milo
================================================================
    John DiCamillo                         Fiery the Angels Fell 
    milod@netcom.com       Deep thunder rode around their shores

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[jim hopper]

In article <54qfne$gl6@peippo.cs.tut.fi>
olavip@kaarne.cs.tut.fi (Poutanen Olavi) writes:

> You will find there descriptions of TBGEN (a test harnessing tool for unit
> testing) and TCMON (a code coverage/execution profiling tool). There are
> descriptions of some our C/C++ test tools as well...

Do you support gnat??  Your web page doesnt say.

jim

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Kazimir Majorinc]

Hello!

Think about it on this way: important is only what is good, not what is
popular. Please, do not care about your managers. They are, stupid,
unhonest people who tries to make money without real work again and again.
If you like to programm in any language, do it, if you must to do it in
other language becouse your manager want it, do it, but not help them to
do it to you playing amateur manager. If you are manager quit and find
honest job. I personaly use C++ but I love to read about yout beautiful
language.

_______________________________________________
Author: Kazimir Majorinc
E-mail: Kazimir.Majorinc@public.srce.hr
        kmajor@public.srce.hr (slightly better)
http:   //public.srce.hr/~kmajor (~7min to USA)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One who knows the secret of the 7th stair


Richard Riehle (rriehle@nunic.nu.edu) wrote:


:|I am meeting more and more DoD managers and contractors who, at the
:|management level, are concerned with whether Ada has the staying
:|power required for them to select it for important projects. While
:|many of them agree that Ada is probably superior to C++, that superiority
:|may prove to be of marginal value when weighed against the availability
:|of tools for C++, programmers in C++, and the myriad of other resources
:|for C++.  

:|These managers are asking whether Ada will be around for the next ten
:|years, and if it is, whether there will be cost-effective tools and
:|compilers to make Ada a good business decision.  They are convinced that
:|C++ will not go away.  And they believe that C++, with all of its
:|liabilities, will continue to get better.  This is a powerful argument.

:|One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three
:|Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that
:|the field has narrowed.  Now name three software companies who provide
:|testing tools for Ada.  What about three providers of configuration
:|management tools?  What about other third-party tools?

:|It is significant, I think, that so many compiler publishers are
:|paying attention to the need for support of Microsoft Win32 platforms
:|such as NT. But what about the other software companies who might be
:|creating tools that work with these compilers?  

:|Perhaps I am simply encountering a lot of such criticism because of the
:|kind of work I do.  Maybe there are lots more program managers out there
:|who are enthusiastically embracing Ada.  Someone tell me, please, that
:|I am simply worrying from too small a sample size.

:|Richard Riehle

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada (was What is Ada used for?)

[Robert I. Eachus]

In article <54gc04$osv@uuneo.neosoft.com> rlove@neosoft.com (Robert B. Love ) writes:

  > Where are the success stories for C++ in large DoD efforts?  Since
  > I don't do C++ I don't see them.  Are there any?  We know of Ada
  > success stories.

    I don't know of any, but I know of some failures. I know of some
VERY successful large projects in Ada, and successful large projects
in C, COBOL (various versions), FORTRAN 66 and 77, Jovial J3, Jovial
J73, CMS-2Y, Lisp, Scheme, and Smalltalk.  Note that successful
projects are more likely than failures to be multilingual.  In fact
the most successful combination seems to be Ada with some C.  But no
successful DoD program that I know of has used a significant amount of
C++.  Fortunately, the failure of C++ systems seems to come before or
during integration, not after deployment.

    I can't speak for MITRE, or even for all DoD software projects
that MITRE has a finger in supporting, but that should be a very
troubling statement to those advocating use of C++ on defense systems.

    By the way, C is not the enemy, and even C++ is not the enemy.
The enemy is the ignorance of software engineering that we see every
day.  If the best language for the job was always chosen, our taxes
would be lower.  (And Ada would be used a lot more often. ;-)



--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Robert I. Eachus]

In article <326FCA54.167E@lanl.gov> William Clodius <wclodius@lanl.gov> writes:

 >  I suggest a visit to Nullstone's list of compiler companies

 >  http://www.nullstone.com/htmls/companies/companies.htm

 >  It lists

 > Language	# Vendors
 > Ada 		6
 > Basic		3
 > C++ 		30
 > C		50+
 > Cobol		4
 > Fortran 77&90	15
 > Java		2
 > Lisp		2
 > Modula 2	1
 > Pascal		3
 > PL/1		1

 > Note the C/C++ vendors may be highly agressive in listing their wares, I
 > know of Fortran, Lisp, and Modula 2 vendors not represented on the list,
 > and some list only their C/C++ compilers and not those for other
 > languages, but I suspect that Ada's are also highly agressive.

  And COBOL vendors must be noticably unwilling to list the fact that
they produce COBOL compilers as well as fourth gen tools.

 > Note also that different vendors may share different front or back ends.

 > Still I suspect that any reasonable person would agree that the number
 > of Ada vendors is significantly less thatn the number of C++ vendors.

  No, a reasonable person would conclude that the number of Ada
dialects is much lower than the number of C++ dialects.  I often see
platforms for which I have my choice of Ada vendors, but at most one
C++ compiler available.  (Of course, that may have to do with the part
of the industry I live in.  The situation is reversed on the Mac.)

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
function Message (Text: in Clever_Ideas) return Better_Ideas is...

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Ken Garlington]

Stanley R. Allen wrote:
> 
> > One senior executive at a DoD contracting site asked me to name three
> > Ada compiler vendors. It was easy to name three, but I realized that
> > the field has narrowed.  Now name three software companies who provide
> > testing tools for Ada.

GRC
McCabe
LDRA

and several others....

>  What about three providers of configuration management tools?

SQL*Systems
Tower
DEC

and several others (particularly since many CM tools are language-insensitive)...

> What about other third-party tools?

What are you looking for? Requirements analysis tools? Design tools (with Ada code
generation)? Documentation tools? GUI builders?

Anyone who claims they can't build a complete CASE environment for Ada isn't
looking very hard (like, on the AdaIC web pages, or in the STSC reports)...

-- 
LMTAS - "Our Brand Means Quality"
For more info, see http://www.lmtas.com or http://www.lmco.com

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Matthew Heaney]

Has anyone seen this web page:

<http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/books/apprentice/InstructorsManual/C++
_Choice.html>

Two professors from England explain why they teach C++ as a first-year
language, instead of teaching Ada or Eiffel or Modula-2 etc.  Since their
charts list Ada as lacking support for object-oriented programming, perhaps
they don't realize there's a new Ada standard (not to mention free
compilers) that does.

Pedagogues: any comments about the paper?

matt

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
mheaney@ni.net
(818) 985-1271

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Rush Kester]

David Emery (demer@hc17031.hcsd.ca) wrote:

: Popularity is hardly a good criterion for teaching -anything-.  The CS1
: language (or its equivalent) should be chosen for its educational advantage,
: and not because some kid somewhere read that it was helpful for getting
: a job this week.  Besides, it looks like Java is replacing C++ in the
: "popularity charts"; students who spend a lot of time learning C++ without
: learning the underlying programming are likely to be unpleasantly surprised
: when there are no C++ jobs available when they graduate in 4 years...

: Incidentally, my friends in academia say that there's a big rush towards
: Java for teaching, as being both "politically correct" and substantially
: better than C++ for teaching.  I'd much rather have a Java-trained programmer
: than a C++ programmer; it's my observation that the primary skill you learn
: as a C++ programmer is working with a debugger :-)

: 				dave

But what about the decision awhile back by the Educational Testing Service
to convert the Computer Science Advance Placement exam from Pascal to C++? 
Do you mean that those High Schools that are revamping their classes
toward the new AP in C++ are going to "reach a dead-end," or find another
"turn in the road?" 

Rush Kester
Sr. Software Engineer
-- 
Rush Kester
W (301) 640-3632 (in person M-F: 9am-5pm EDST, voicemail any time)
Fax        -4750 or -4940

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[David Emery]

Thomas said:
>Regarding the article: I couldn't disagree more to most of it.  But
>there is one sentence in it which deserves a second thought: The
>students are said to be "highly motivated" because they jump at C++
>after all the hype they've heard and read about it.  Given that they
>can learn just a single language at school, they assume that they will
>"need" C++ to get a job; maybe they are not even that wrong, the way
>things are.

Popularity is hardly a good criterion for teaching -anything-.  The CS1
language (or its equivalent) should be chosen for its educational advantage,
and not because some kid somewhere read that it was helpful for getting
a job this week.  Besides, it looks like Java is replacing C++ in the
"popularity charts"; students who spend a lot of time learning C++ without
learning the underlying programming are likely to be unpleasantly surprised
when there are no C++ jobs available when they graduate in 4 years...

Incidentally, my friends in academia say that there's a big rush towards
Java for teaching, as being both "politically correct" and substantially
better than C++ for teaching.  I'd much rather have a Java-trained programmer
than a C++ programmer; it's my observation that the primary skill you learn
as a C++ programmer is working with a debugger :-)

				dave
-- 
<.sig is away on vacation>

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Thomas Kendelbacher]

In article <mheaney-ya023180002710961051200001@news.ni.net>, mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney) writes:
>Has anyone seen this web page:
>
><http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/books/apprentice/InstructorsManual/C++
>_Choice.html>
>
>Two professors from England explain why they teach C++ as a first-year
>language, instead of teaching Ada or Eiffel or Modula-2 etc.  Since their
>charts list Ada as lacking support for object-oriented programming, perhaps
>they don't realize there's a new Ada standard (not to mention free
>compilers) that does.
>
>Pedagogues: any comments about the paper?

Just FYI:  The October issue (#5/96) of "Informatik-Spektrum", the official
journal of the Gesellschaft fuer Informatik (German computer science association)
contains an article where some Profs. describe their programming curriculum
which consists _only_ of C++, although they list its teaching disadvantages
in their article (taking too much time to teach low-level details instead
of general programming concepts, due to complex/cryptic syntax etc.)

One of their main reasons why they choose C++ over Eiffel, Ada etc. is:
They intend to confront the students with the "'dark side' of programming"
(verbatim!) to better prepare them for reality.

Now, how do pedagogues comment on this?

To give you a correct picture:  This is not the programming curriculum for
university students of computer science, but for a so-called "Fachhochschule",
which, in the German education system, is a special school/college which
provides only a degree somewhat below a bachelors degree.  They don't have
very much time for programming courses in their curriculum; it's even tight
for the basics of a single programming language.

Regarding the article: I couldn't disagree more to most of it.  But there is
one sentence in it which deserves a second thought:  The students are said to be
"highly motivated" because they jump at C++ after all the hype they've heard
and read about it.  Given that they can learn just a single language at school,
they assume that they will "need" C++ to get a job; maybe they are not even
that wrong, the way things are.

-- 
Thomas Kendelbacher   |   email : Thomas.Kendelbacher@erno.de (preferred)
DASA RI / Abt. RIT14  |   voice : +49 421 539 5492 (working hours)
Postfach 28 61 56     |      or : +49 421 576 9670 (any other time)
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Germany

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Poutanen Olavi]

Jim Hopper asked

>olavip@kaarne.cs.tut.fi (Poutanen Olavi) writes:
>
>> You will find there descriptions of TBGEN (a test harnessing tool for unit
>> testing) and TCMON (a code coverage/execution profiling tool). There are
>> descriptions of some our C/C++ test tools as well...
>
>Do you support gnat??  Your web page doesnt say.
>
>jim

Haven't tried it (yet). As TBGEN and TCMON are all written in
'vanilla' Ada 83, there should be no special problems with it
(unless gnat's unit/file naming conventions bring some work...)

- Olavi
(http://www.testwell.sci.fi)

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Jon S Anthony]

In article <mheaney-ya023180002710961051200001@news.ni.net> mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney) writes:

> Has anyone seen this web page:
> 
> <http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/books/apprentice/InstructorsManual/C++
> _Choice.html>
> 
> Two professors from England explain why they teach C++ as a first-year
> language, instead of teaching Ada or Eiffel or Modula-2 etc.  Since their
> charts list Ada as lacking support for object-oriented programming, perhaps
> they don't realize there's a new Ada standard (not to mention free
> compilers) that does.
> 
> Pedagogues: any comments about the paper?

Not a "pedagogue" but, it is just this sort of thing that gives
academic "CS" such a poor image to various people.  How can two so
called "professors" be so clueless about their chosen field of
expertise?????  It makes them (and by association...) look like
incompetent fools.  Well, if the shoe fits...

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Ed Falis]

I had an interesting discussion with the HS computer teacher at my son's
school about the AP exam.

He'd been using Pascal for the programming classes, but felt under some
pressure to make sure that those kids who wanted to take the AP exam
would be prepared.  The school was seriously considering C++ to replace
Pascal.

Although I'd have preferred to recommend Ada (and in fact have passed
along a copy of ObjectAda), I suggested he use java for several reasons:
B. Meyer's recommendations for how to teach programming (start as a
client of packages), relative
simplicity of java (to C++), ease of producing something through use of
the java environment packages, the "cool" factor, and sufficient
syntactic (and semantic) similarity to C++ to give kids who want to 
take the AP exam a sound platform for learning C++.

He's implemented this, and it's working very well so far.

Maybe once I've piqued his curiosity with ObjectAda, he'll want to 
introduce Ada into the mix as well.

-- 
Ed Falis
Thomson Software Products

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Arlene S. Felton]

Jon S Anthony wrote:
> ...snip...
> 
> Not a "pedagogue" but, it is just this sort of thing that gives
> academic "CS" such a poor image to various people.  How can two so
> called "professors" be so clueless about their chosen field of
> expertise?????  It makes them (and by association...) look like
> incompetent fools.  Well, if the shoe fits...
> 
> /Jon
> --
> Jon Anthony
> Organon Motives, Inc.
> Belmont, MA 02178
> 617.484.3383
> jsa@organon.com

I just have to tell this story. I was taking a course for my masters, and the 
professor expected us to use C for the homework (I do Ada). He had expected us 
to write a _library_ routine that 1) depended on the _main_ program to include 
string.h, 2) printed a message if an error occurred, and 3) would exit the 
program after printing the error message. Am I crazy? Would anyone ever use such 
a library routine? I tried to say I'd have the routine return a status, and if 
there were an error, I'd handle any output myself from the main program, and I'd 
decide when or if the program should exit. I later heard him complaining to 
other professors in the department that we didn't even know how to write a 
library routine. I was not impressed.

arlene
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
                Arlene S. Felton

       NEW --> akeakama@wsii.com  <-- NEW!

"If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something
 wrong with the universe!"    Dr. Crusher (Remember Me)
------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[David Emery]

Rush asks:
>But what about the decision awhile back by the Educational Testing Service
>to convert the Computer Science Advance Placement exam from Pascal to C++? 

Good question!  This arbitrary decision by ETS has sparked a lot of
controversy and protest.  The ACM Technical Standards Committee, for
instance, has written several letters of protest, and, the last I
heard, had gotten ETS to postphone the implementation of this decision
for at least a year.  

The reported experience (at the Computer Science Education
conferences) with teaching C++ in CS1 has been poor.  The notion that
high schools need to start teaching C++ is truly bizarre.  But, if the
"Java for CS1" trend grows as many expect, then an Advanced Placement
exam for C++ will end up being irrelevant for CS1.  This means that
the efforts by ETS to develop a C++ based AP exam will be wasted,
which would serve them right! :-)

				dave
--
<.sig is away on vacation>

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

Thomas.Kendelbacher@erno.de (Thomas Kendelbacher) writes:

>One of their main reasons why they choose C++ over Eiffel, Ada etc. is:
>They intend to confront the students with the "'dark side' of programming"
>(verbatim!) to better prepare them for reality.

>Now, how do pedagogues comment on this?

"whether it is nobler in the mind to endure the slings and arrows
of outrageous fortune, or by opposition end them?"

It sounds as though they believe in forcing their students to endure
those slings and arrows (rather apt considering the frequency of ->
in C++; could the slings be "throw" statements?).

I belong to the school that says "it is better to like a single
candle than to bless the darkness".

>To give you a correct picture:  This is not the programming curriculum for
>university students of computer science, but for a so-called "Fachhochschule",
>which, in the German education system, is a special school/college which
>provides only a degree somewhat below a bachelors degree.

Sounds like our TAFE.

Computing is amazingly complex.  It's like playing the guitar; any fool
can twang the strings, but there aren't many Segovias who can make it
sound good.  (Terry Pratchett's "Soul Music" puts it much better...)
There is so *much* to learn.  Here I am, a lecturer, and this year I
have had to learn three new programming languages (Java, Tcl, NewtonScript)
and three architectures (MIPS IV, PowerPC, Alpha; I'm not counting learning
SPARC V9 because I already knew SPARC V8).  That's in addition to having
to learn HTML and struggling vainly for a week to try to understand OLE2.

Without conceit, I can honestly say that I know quite a lot about quite a
lot of computing topics.  I have the *knowledge* to teach most of the
courses we run.  But I lack one essential, which means that some of our
least experienced and less knowledgable staff members make much better
teachers than I am.  What's that essential?

	To answer the question that a *student* is asking,
	not the question I would have been asking if I had said that.

For example, two days ago a student who was revising for the forthcoming
1st year final exam asked me a question about Ada Text_IO.  I answered
him in great detail, with much reference to the LRM to make sure I had
my facts absolutely straight.  I fear that I may have left him more
confused than when he started (which was fairly confused, anyone who
thinks that 
	while End_Of_File(File_In_Input_Mode) loop
	    Put_Line(File_In_Input_Mode, Line(1 .. Length));
	end loop
will move to the end of a file and append the line once is pretty
confused to start with).

C++ is exactly like this.  There is a ton of stuff in C++, all of which
was put in to solve problems, but TAFE-level students don't even understand
the problems yet, so how are they to understand the answers?  (Especially
when some of the things in C++ are like the old woman who swallowed the
horse:  they are there to fix problems caused by other things that were
added to C++, like the fly the old woman started with.)

I will probably be roasted for saying this, but if you want to turn out
trained seals who have a genuine understanding of a marketable computing
skill, you would probably do best to teach them Visual Basic.

If

>They don't have
>very much time for programming courses in their curriculum; it's even tight
>for the basics of a single programming language.

then Visual Basic is probably about the right level to cover, and they
will be able to *accomplish* more than by using C++.

>But there is
>one sentence in it which deserves a second thought:  The students are said to be
>"highly motivated" because they jump at C++ after all the hype they've heard
>and read about it.  Given that they can learn just a single language at school,
>they assume that they will "need" C++ to get a job; maybe they are not even
>that wrong, the way things are.

There are a number of things to say.

One is that this only addresses the motivation students have when they
_start_.  It says nothing about whether students *stay* motivated when
they struggle with a dauntingly complex language whose mastery requires
a *thorough* understanding of many aspects of computing.  I would imagine
that Visual Basic, disgusting though it seems to *mean*, would better
*sustain* the students' motivation because they would get more rewards
than punishments with it, in contrast to C++.

The other is that half-trained programmers are a menace to civilisation,
certainly on a level with half-trained plumbers, and perhaps on a level
with half-trained doctors.  At the judgement, One will say to these
teachers "inasmuch as you taught C++ to the least of My brothers, you
did it to Me; away with you to eternal darkness."


-- 
Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote!
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[Robert Dewar]

"
One of their main reasons why they choose C++ over Eiffel, Ada etc. is:
They intend to confront the students with the "'dark side' of programming"
(verbatim!) to better prepare them for reality."


I think they mean the dark side of coding, not of programming, but then
very often university professors teaching these kinds of courses don't
make this distinction :-)

Re: Choosing C++ instead of Ada

[nasser]

In article <32780744.2F79@wsii.com>, "Arlene says...
>
>I just have to tell this story. I was taking a course for my masters, and the 
>professor expected us to use C for the homework (I do Ada). He had expected us 
>to write a _library_ routine that 1) depended on the _main_ program to include 
>string.h, 2) printed a message if an error occurred, and 3) would exit the 
>program after printing the error message. Am I crazy? Would anyone ever use such 
>a library routine? I tried to say I'd have the routine return a status, and if 
>there were an error, I'd handle any output myself from the main program, and I'd 
>decide when or if the program should exit. I later heard him complaining to 
>other professors in the department that we didn't even know how to write a 
>library routine. I was not impressed.
>

Why would you think that a CS instructor would necessarily know
how to write good software? most CS teachers/profs/instructors  
have little real life software experience.  

Nasser