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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!reader02.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!feeder.erje.net!1.eu.feeder.erje.net!enother.net!enother.net!peer02.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!Xl.tags.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2015 21:40:53 -0500 Date: Sun, 19 Jul 2015 20:40:50 -0600 From: Norman Worth User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.7.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Weakness of Ada is expensive / security / etc. ? Anything else? References: <084c0dc7-ae74-4cb8-b1fe-78f42de94291@googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: <084c0dc7-ae74-4cb8-b1fe-78f42de94291@googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <5IidnWtEWowowjHInZ2dnUVZ5v6dnZ2d@giganews.com> X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-wCU1qChKLxIA7sj1sznTOIbj3ySotdTYtnXodujth7o8NoKlfVrUes/zr1CMxcZ+ZSwMAtmUtsr5iiW!F0UpB9OOOP7xbG6epAWYm/Aq0zerBBbw7iTcj4KmRjz9yHs7J8+L5kO7i6hh0xbVVBkExQy+T/c= X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 X-Original-Bytes: 5975 X-Received-Bytes: 6087 X-Received-Body-CRC: 4102795613 Xref: news.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:26894 Date: 2015-07-19T20:40:50-06:00 List-Id: On 7/17/2015 4:19 AM, Trish Cayetano wrote: > Hi, here is what I have noted as strengths and weaknesses of Ada. Let me know for any corrections and if you have anything to add... Thank you! > > Strength and weaknesses of the language > Strength > - Semantics - well defined even in error situations Yes. This is perhaps Ada's greatest strength. It is what makes Ada safe and often what makes it reliably understandable. It is why many errors that creep in with other languages simply can not happen in Ada. But every Ada programmer has (fairly often) screamed at the compiler "I didn't do that!" or "What the hell does that mean!" while staring at an obscure error message. He then clicks in the appropriate place to get the ARM reference and, momentarily, is even more confused. Of course, he did make the error, and there is a sound meaning to the error message. Despite the occasional frustration, I don't know of anyone who seriously wants to relax the rules. Since a bit before Ada 95 it seems to have become a serious area of study to find ways to make Ada easy to use while keeping this strict semantic safety net. > - Strong typing - can be used to reduce the scope (and cost) of analysis Those of us who are used to it love it. Others really hate it. This is a matter of training and experience. It is not always obvious how to make strong typing work for you. > - Quality - successfully used in many high integrity applications > - Standardization - Ada is probably the most standardized language in existence. This means that programs and systems can be moved from one environment to another with little or no fuss, and they work as expected when moved. It also means that programmers require minimum retraining when going from one setting to another. > > Weaknesses > - Ada complete language is too complex. True or False? If true, how? It is not too complex, but it is complex. Fortunately, it is quite modular, and you can use it effectively while learning the more obscure or complex features. I might mention that other languages are also becoming very complex, and they do not always share the modularity or stright-forward and uniform style of Ada. Have you looked at the most recent versions of Fortran and Cobol? > - Ada requires expensive compilers for large systems Not at all. I first used Ada (full Ada 83) on a North Star Z80 computer with a very cheap commercial compiler (RR Software). The latest version of the language (Ada 2012) is fully supported by the free GNAT compiler, which is available for just about all modern computers. Even fully supported compilers are competitively priced, and the fully supported version of GNAT (from AdaCore) is quite reasonable. These compilers support systems of any size. > - Ada lacks that web presence greatly. comp.lang.ada is the only location on the internet with an active Ada community. Good point. Google "Ada language" and you will get a few more references. But links are often out of date, and there is not much activity. Even this forum does not see much action. The compiler makers, like AdaCore, try to keep up some activities of their sites and often have interesting articles and tutorials. > - How is security a weakness? (Strength can be a weakness too?) It isn't. > - It is difficult to find modern and versatile development tools. I have had Ada turned down as the development language for projects because of this. GPS is an acceptable, if somewhat awkward, tool for GNAT, but it pales in comparison to the tools available for C/C++. > - It is difficult to find interfaces to standard libraries, like Motif or the Windows GUI libraries or databases or to the standard scientific libraries written for Fortran or C. This can be a real problem. Most big projects rely on standard libraries, and almost any user interface requires a GUI these days. The interfaces often exist, but they can be hard to find. In some cases, they are proprietary. GTKAda provides an interface to the GTK+ graphical interface routines for Linux. Unfortunately, it is hard to use compared to Visual C++, and the documentation is difficult. GNAT from AdaCore provides a Windows interface. (I haven't tried it.) There is an old interface to XLib and Motif that used to work, but I haven't seen it in years. GNAT from AdaCore has interfaces to some databases, including an ODBC interface, but databases do not seem to be well supported in general. > - Programmers are reluctant to learn and use Ada because they feel it limits their employment opportunities. >