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=1.4 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY,PLING_QUERY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,4873305131bf4d94 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Rakesh Malhotra Subject: Re: How big is an int? (was: Yet another stupid language war (was: ... the only languages you need!!)) Date: 1997/11/27 Message-ID: <65klci$b61$2@gte2.gte.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 293228998 References: <64fbr2$76k$1@route1.mdrf.france3.fr> <879901314snz@genesis.demon.co.uk> <3473B088.3227@dynamite.com.au> <64ve5n$c6m$1@helios.crest.nt.com> <3474C1F0.365A@dynamite.com.au> <6527n9$340@mtinsc05.worldnet.att.net> <34767515.5253@dynamite.com.au> X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Organization: gte.net X-Auth: UNKNOWN@207.175.180.6 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1997-11-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Alan E & Carmel J Brain wrote: > > Craig Franck wrote: [snip] > I didn't mean me personally.. people shun me because of bad breath, not > because I program in Ada. (I 'spose I better include a :-) for the > humour impaired ). > > No, I meant things like: > > > I know the STC is dropping Ada tracks, but I was unpleasantly > > surprised to receive a call from a track coordinator yesterday [snip]." > ... > > Then I asked if all submissions with "Ada" in the title were getting > > similar requests. The track coordinator thought so. > > Also: > (after the decision by Mr Page to no longer mandate Ada for the DoD) > > I was in the > > >office of the CEO of one well-known DoD > > >contractor recently who said, "Get with it > > >Richard. Ada is dead, dead, dead." His > > >company has pulled out of the Ada > > >marketplace entirely. > > Also: > >[snip] > > Little things like that. > After reading the interesting postings on this thread for a while I felt compelled to respond to the 3 items mentioned above. It boggles my mind why the CEO said what he did or why STC do not want to publicise Ada. I have used Ada very successfully first on a big project in Australia and more recently in the last 3 years on 2 more projects in the US. All projects are embedded, real time and were done by commercial companies (no big budget defence contractor/aerospace) who could as easily have chosen to do them in C or any other language. And I have recently started on my next project and have (almost) decided to chose Ada again. I did not come to this decision easily as I have some doubts about Ada being around for the long run as also being able to get Ada resources (people and tools). So, since I am familiar with C, C++ and some Java, I thought I would do some investigation to see if I should choose Ada again or maybe move to C, C++. I did this investigation in as impartial a manner as I could. I read a lot of very interesting papers and also a book called "Safer C: Developing Software for High-Integrity and Safety Critical Systems". After reading all this stuff (specially the book) I came to the conclusion that if I was to do everything that the book recommended I should do to make C "good enough" (by the use of PC-Lint or other tools) I may as well have used Ada and received all the other advantages that that language gives me. The reason for my wanting to make C "good enough" is that I would rather have the compiler or PC-lint/other tools pick up my errors than debug them at run time, as also to write well engineered, readable, maintainable programs. I do not want to repeat all the obvious advantages that Ada has (like modularity(packages), readabilty etc), however, in addition to these Ada also gives me shorter time to market because I spend my time debugging my application rather than silly programming errors like array overflows or mis-pointed pointers etc. Some of these features I can get in C,C++ by using a program like PC-Lint with its "STRONG TYPING" option; the use of PC-Lint and strong typing is recommended in the book but I still cannot get all the other benefits that Ada brings to the table. So inspite of what the CEO said or what STC is doing, till I have a choice of language for my projects, I intend to continue using Ada. One of my few wishes are that Ada tools were cheaper (yes I know about GNAT) and more were around. -- Rakesh.