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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,fa07350fd81f7563 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,80e8e0df8032d89e X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,fa07350fd81f7563 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-10-31 17:28:22 PST Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcomsv!annwfn!annwfn!merlin From: merlin@annwfn.com (Fred McCall) Subject: Re: Is C/C++ the future? Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 07:07:41 -0600 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.object Message-ID: <85DF1879046@annwfn.com> References: <1994Oct25.234705.26530@sei.cmu.edu> Organization: Is For People Who Don't Have Real Work X-Newsreader: Newsy 0.23 Xref: bga.com comp.lang.ada:7407 comp.lang.c++:34869 comp.object:8092 Date: 1994-10-31T07:07:41-06:00 List-Id: In <1994Oct25.234705.26530@sei.cmu.edu> riehler@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu Richard Riehle writes: >This is not a language problem. It is an incomplete compiler problem. If >a C compiler or an Eiffel compiler or a FORTRAN compiler were correspondingly >incomplete, there would be a howl of protest throughout the industry. Only >Ada compiler vendors could get away with this because they ostensibly met >the requriement for validation. Doesn't this problem (not being able to write 'real' programs, according to the respondent, without requiring all that machine-specific support) pretty much shoot the much-vaunted 'portability' of Ada code in the foot? It seems to me that this leaves Ada with the same problem that so many Ada advocates want to 'bash' C/C++ for -- non-portable code is non-portable (somewhat solipsist, but that seems to be the complaint). Should the language include platform independent ways of doing most of those 'platform-specific' things? It would seem to follow the Ada philosophy of maximal safety; after all, if pieces of configuration control are required to be part of the linker, why not define an 'Ada windows' interface (for example) and then require compilers for platforms with window support to map their functionality onto the interface? -- "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Ames Dryden --------------------------------------------------------------------------- merlin@annwfn.com -- I don't speak for others and they don't speak for me.