Re: Ada The Best Language?

[codesavvy@aol.com (codesavvy)]

Frank I think you make a lot of good points.  If Ada was to ever be
more widely adopted developers and managers have to be convinced that
the benifits of using Ada as oppossed to C++ have the sufficient
"payback" to make the transition worth it.

"Beard, Frank" <beardf@spawar.navy.mil> wrote in message news:<mailman.995501845.19985.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>...
> I generally don't like getting into these discussions because it's
> all irrelevant anyway.  The volume (or success) of C++ to Ada has
> nothing to do with the relative quality/productivity/superiority
> of Ada relative to C++.  It has to do with initial investment.
> C (leading into C++) had a 10 or 15 year head start on Ada.  When
> Ada came about, most of the C compilers were free, or near free, 
> while the Ada compilers were very expensive.  When a manager looks
> at initial costs (no matter how near-sighted that may be), and says
> 
>    "I can use a free, or near free, C compiler, or pay $20+ for an
>    Ada compiler.  Let's see which way to go?"
> 
> Even with the Ada mandate, there were plenty of groups violating it,
> mostly due to cost.  Even when we moved to the PC arena back in 1989,
> the Alsys compiler was $5K, while Turbo C was $59.  Even after the big
> Alsys price cut, it was still $2500 per copy.  So, the low cost of C
> lead to wide use from the home hacker to company software teams, which
> led to lots of libraries for just about everything under the sun.
> Granted the initial cost argument has not been true for a number
> of years now, but it doesn't negate the head start enjoyed by C/C++.
> 
> Fortunately, I worked for managers that were not so near-sighted and
> chose Ada, but I was around plenty that went the other way.
> 
> While I agree with McDoobie that different languages have their
> strong points and are better in different situations, the question
> "what language is the best" translates, in my mind, to "what is
> the best general purpose language".  To me that is Ada (though I
> haven't used Eiffel and have only looked at Java).  Not just from
> what I've read, but what I've experienced as well.  I've moved 
> from VAX VMS to LynxOS to IBM MVS back to HP-UX to Windows, with
> very little change to code.
> 
> Similar C/C++ ports were nightmares.  Anything that had to do
> with shared memory (global sections on VAX), threads/processes,
> interprocess communication, semaphores, etc., were extremely
> painful to port in C/C++.  All of which were nicely taken care of
> by highly portable tasks in Ada.  Fortunately, I didn't have to do
> an of the C/C++ ports.
> 
> Of course Ada can't be the best for all situations (at least not yet),
> but if it's good enough to do the job well, then I don't care to
> learn the "better" language for that isolated advantage.  I admire 
> McDoobie and others who can work in multiple languages fluently.
> My mind just doesn't work well that way.  I prefer to choose what
> I think is the best overall and go with it, until something forces
> me to use another.  I've done Assembly (VAX), Fortran, Pascal,
> C/C++, and Ada.  I've seen a number of studies over the years that
> showed Ada superiority to C/C++ in readability, error detection,
> reliability, SLOC reduction, maintainability, etc. But I'm not even
> going to bother trying to look them up, because it didn't make a
> difference the first time, and it won't make a difference now.
> 
> With the huge amount of libraries and interfaces defined for C/C++
> (and Java), most C/C++ programmers wouldn't consider switching to
> Ada unless it had at least the same amount, and probably not even
> then, despite the technical advantages of Ada.  Ada has to at least
> catch up, and be able to adapt to new hardware and interfaces as
> fast as C/C++.  Plus we need innovation that will put Ada in the
> lead instead of playing catch up.  I just wish I knew how to do
> it.
> 
> Frank
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: codesavvy@aol.com [mailto:codesavvy@aol.com]
> 
> > No but do you have any data that measures how much more productive an
> > Ada developer is using these features?  BTW I like these features in
> > Ada 95 a lot.  I doubt, however, that producitivity is increased
> > significantly by having them available.