Re: Design/Development questions

[RCAPENER@cc.utah.edu]

In article <677@tfsg.UUCP>, dennis@tfsg.UUCP (Dennis Gibbs) writes:
> <>
> 
> I have a couple of hypothetical questions regarding C and Ada:
> 
> 1) If you have a software design, all things  being equal, if you implement
>    the design in both Ada and C, which implementation will have the highest
>    number of lines of code, the C implementation or the Ada implementation?
>    How much percentage-wise(more or less) on  average, would the difference
>    be?

Well, you said it, all things probably are equal, including the lines
of code.  Some C programmers put the '{' at the end of the line, and
the others put it underneath the 'if', 'else', 'switch', et al.  It
SEEMS like they are about equal to me.

> 2) I remember  seeing various  studies that  show the length of time spent
>    developing software  systems from  the earliest design  stages to final
>    delivery.  Again, in a perfect world, would  it take more  or less time
>    to  design and develop in  Ada vs. C?  I am  excluding the maintenance/
>    enhancement phase in  this question.  If I recall I believe I have seen
>    studies somewhere that  show that  it takes  the same  amount  of  time
>    overall to design and develop in Ada vs. other languages, but that more
>    time is spent in design and less spent in coding for Ada.  Can  someone
>    direct me to any studies that investigate this issue?
> 

This is a real thorny question, since Ada can provide far more protection
to the programmer than C does.  But on the other hand, many programmers
who code in C don't want to code in Ada, and vice-versa.  There are some
absolutely brilliant programmers coding in C because they prefer more
freedom to create (or hang themselves).  It seems the time spent is in
direct proportion to how modular (or better, object oriented) a language
is.  The more modular it is, the more reusable the code is, and the less
you have to totally rewrite anything.

> I do not wish to start  more C vs. Ada flame wars again, my purpose is  to
> start an informative, educational discussion on this subject....
> 

Awww, why not?  Do you really want a dry, dull, drab world?

Now that I have added my two bits on the above, all of which is totally
and purely subjective, I have a question to ask people on the net.
In VAX-Ada, the GET and the GET_LINE procedures have the very
disconcerting behavior that when you get a string, you must enter
the EXACT number of characters the string is declared for.  Is this
behavior part of the LRM?  Does anyone in NetLand have the equivalent
of C's fgets for strings in Ada?  Any input (pun intended) on solving
this problem will be appreciated.