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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fd6dd,c78177ec2e61f4ac X-Google-Attributes: gidfd6dd,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,c78177ec2e61f4ac X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Dale Stanbrough Subject: Re: ada and robots Date: 1997/06/01 Message-ID: <5mqpj3$bc5$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 245376349 Distribution: world References: <338CDA96.53EA@halcyon.com> <338F5D7D.6C03@tiac.net> <338F9D05.5EB3@bix.com> X-XXMessage-ID: Organization: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Newsgroups: comp.robotics.misc,comp.lang.ada Date: 1997-06-01T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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