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From: pontius@btv.vnet.ibm.com (Dale Pontius)
Subject: Re: Success: Ada versus C
Date: 1997/06/09
Message-ID: <5ngt2t$ei8$2@mdnews.btv.ibm.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 247232272
References: <zdqyUFAeYYlzUw6H@clanchy.demon.co.uk> <33984686.9A8@gdls.com>
 <5n9l3m$f2e$3@mdnews.btv.ibm.com> <dewar.865692615@merv>
Organization: IBM Microelectronics Division
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-06-09T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <dewar.865692615@merv>,
        dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
> Dale says
>
> << There is a "Purity" emphasis to the language that leaves you
>    (or at least me) fearing that it "CAN'T" be fast. For instance,
>    the whole discussion of copying IN and OUT the parameter list
>    leaves a taste of poor performance. Read further and you see
>>>
>
> What are you saying here? That call by reference is preferable from an
> efficiency point of view to call by value return for scalars? Surely
> not (most Fortran compilers also pass scalars by value).
>
I'm saying that until you think it through, pass-by-reference seems
faster. Think twice and you see that pass-by-value is faster for
simple values. Pass-by-reference shines on structures, which is
where Ada95 allows it.

I didn't say Ada95 does anything "wrong" or slow, I just said that
at first glimpse it looks that way. Look harder and the "can't run
fast" first impression goes away.

Dale Pontius
(NOT speaking for IBM)