Re: ada and robots

[Dale Stanbrough <dale@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU>]

John Cook writes:

"If you like ADA, that is, if you enjoy very very verbose code and a very
 limited set of vendors then ADA is OK.  
 
 However, if you want a small, terse language that is easily expandable,
 has been proven for 30 years and has a huge set of vendors that target
 the type of small systems a student can afford, look into C language. 
 I'll admit that its harder to read than ADA but K&R wanted a portable
 assembly language with a rich set of operators  and minimal constraints
 so they invented C, and it works.  (And everyone uses it, unlike ADA)."


The level of Usenet debate never ceases to amaze me (or maybe it's just
debate in general).

Lots of claims made about C, and many inferences that similar capabilities
in Ada are not available.
Lets look at them...

"small terse language"
	agree

"easily expandable"
	perhaps, but it seems that small systems restrict rather than expand
	facilities. I wonder what features you are thinking of.

"proven for 30 years"
	So it has was written well before 1967, and has been _proven_ in the
	30 years hence? (I don't regard the first year of tinkering with a 
	language as proving it!). I always thought it was written in the '70's.
	Note that C proving itself has led to the introduction of constants,
	references, namespaces, prototypes etc etc etc. in recent years.

"huge set of vendors"
	Could well be. It's certainly easier for people to write a compiler
	for than Ada. Still what counts is is there a compiler/tools company
	for the stuff you are interested in.

"small systems a student can afford"
	The Meridian Ada compiler, which comes for free with a book, is rather
	cheap, and targets any of the 8086 family (which are cheap, no?).
	It is Ada83 however. So I think you agree with you.

"its harder to read than ADA"
	I think i'ld agree for most things (for arrays of ragged strings C is
	much easier to read, also there is a dichotomy b/w simple {} and the 
	named construct/end construct in terms of readability).

"but K&R wanted..."
	But? This is the strangest claim of all. Why is readability
	inimical to a portable assembly language (which i don't think C is)?
	You could easily change the reserverd words etc, and provide
	references a'la C++, which would dramatically improve it's
	readability.

"a rich set of operators"
	...and by implication Ada does not have. Maybe it doesn't have the
	same set of operators per se (such as "<<", ">>" etc), but it
	certainly has equivalent functionality, which is what really counts
	(functions shift_left, shift_right)

"minimal constraints"
	...and by implication Ada does not have. I'm not really sure what
	you are on about here. What feature does C have that Ada doesn't?

"and it works"
	...and by implication Ada doesn't. What a funny thing to say. In
	what way doesn't it work technically?

"(And everyone uses it, unlike ADA)"
	Well it don't think _everyone_ uses it. I agree with you that not
	everyone uses Ada, but universal quantification has always been  a
	rather heavy claim to support.


Whew!

Dale