Ada folks need to talk to C++ folks more

[wrp <i3text@gmail.com>]

As I learn Ada, I have also been reading about C++ to better
understand by contrast the capabilities and design issues. You can't
spend much time listening to C++ coders without noticing that a lot of
them really don't like the language. Their rants generally go like,
"Even though we hate C++, we need feature X, and since no other
language has it, we're stuck." Generally, the only remotely plausible
alternatives they see are C# and Java.

Well, I think most of time, feature X is actually in Ada. The trouble
is, I never see Ada mentioned in these discussions. I hope here to
prompt people to contribute to these C++ discussions, if not to
promote Ada, then at least to educate C++ users on alternatives.

To get an idea of the kind of complaints people make, this page has a
lot of quotes from famous coders about C++:

http://gigamonkeys.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/coders-c-plus-plus/

Getting to discussion about specifics, this blog post drew a lot of
comments from the game industry:

http://www.rachelslabnotes.com/2009/10/the-hidden-cost-of-c/

The gist of the comments is that only C++ has the combination of:
    1. Support for both programming in the large and low-level
control. (Ada has)
    2. Powerful tool support. (Is GNAT good enough?)
    3. Extensive useful libraries. (Depends on the field, but how
close is Ada?)

A recent discussion on undefined behavior with exceptions would have
benefitted a lot from description of the Ada approach:

http://www.250bpm.com/blog:4