Re: Any research putting c above ada?

[WhiteR@CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US (Robert S. White)]

In article <5ke9ft$15lq@newssvr01-int.news.prodigy.com>, NKSW39B@prodigy.com 
says...

>now be able to get rid of the anchor that's been hanging around our necks.
>  In short, we get to ditch Ada for the next version.  The memo then went 
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

  Curious.  Are you going to throw away all of your previously tested
code modules and re-code/code inspect/low leve test every single code
module for the new version.  Do you ever have code re-use from version
to version?  Or is Ada 83 preventing you from using some large libraries
written in another language?
   
>on to discuss other language options and ask for opinions.
>
>So, it is not merely I who understand that Ada is not the best language 
>for all tasks, but also the project managers and design folks at my 
>company.  C++ was one of the languages discussed to replace Ada, but by 
>no means the only one.
>
>So, to all those who told me (more than once) that I was crazy to think C 
>could do anything better than Ada, I am not alone in my understanding.  

   You say C here again.  But above you say others at your company 
discussed the possiblity of using C++.  For team programming efforts
C does not equate to C++.  C++, Java and Eiffel do provide a better 
set of tools and capabilities (than C) for modern software engineering.  
You could argue that they offer better Object Oriented programming 
features than Ada 83's object based features.  Ada 95 catches up with 
these OO features.  What might be argued about is Eiffel's implementation 
of Design by Contract assertions versus the strong typing that Ada 
provides.  Contrawise one would argue about built-in tasking support 
that Ada provides.  This could go on and on (what are language wars
made of anyway ;-)

>My company shares my opinion, as does the Air Force (after all, they are 
>relaxing the Ada requirement).
  
  The DoD study said other languages could be looked at for 
"non-Warfighting" software.  Are you doing ground based logistics
solutions?  Looked at Smalltalk?  Some could argue that Smalltalk
provides a more rapid OO development enviroment. 

  Frankly I am perplexed about your strong negative "opinion" about
having to use Ada and thinking that C would be a better choice for
your team programming effort.  Do you design software modules with
high cohesion and loose coupling?  Are you concerned with finding 
bugs as early as possible in the software lifecycle?  Is software
re-use a major concern?

_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White                  -- an embedded sys software engineer