Re: Multitude of Problems

[ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)]

In article <1991May20.015647.4051@grebyn.com>, ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden) writes:
> I and a number of my associates, as well as a number of the most
> prominent computer scientists of our age, most notably Charles Anthony
> Richard Hoare, the inventor of the quick-sort process (Turing Award
> Lecture, 1980), believe the Ada programming language to be not only a
> major source of frustration and unnecessary cost to everybody involved
> with it, but an actual threat to the security of the United States and
> of any other nation which might become involved with it.
> About a year ago, I put together a sort of a compendium on user reaction
> to Ada which I still figure tells the whole story, or easily as much as
> any rational person would ever need to know.  Readers be the judge.

I am not an Ada bigot, and I think the horror stories Ted Holden posted
are illuminating and worrying.  However, I'd like to make a few comments:

(1) Ted Holden drags in C.A.R.Hoare ("innocence by association").
    However, many of Hoare's criticisms of Ada apply with equal or greater
    force to C++.  I for one would be extremely interested to learn what
    Hoare _now_ thinks of Ada in comparison with C++.
(2) I myself used to think that Ada was far too complex to use in good
    conscience, until I read the Annotated C++ Reference Manual, and
    learned what "complex" really meant.
(3) Things like generics and exceptions are there in the C++ ARM, but
    they can't yet be used in portable programs, because most C++
    compilers (including cfront) don't support them and the standard
    may change them.  On comp.std.c++ they are still arguing about
    whether something like 'packages' needs to be added to C++ and if
    so what they should look like.  The language keeps changing.

I strongly suspect that once there is a standard for C++ we will have
no shortage of similar horror stories concerning C++.
-- 
There is no such thing as a balanced ecology; ecosystems are chaotic.