Re: bitwise comparators

[Jeff Carter <jrcarter001@my-deja.com>]

In article <3882FC1C.2BA8C959@hotmail.com>,
  Alexander Van Hecke <alexke@hotmail.com> wrote:
> But as you probably noticed, I have a C background and I'm not that
familiar
> with Ada.  I think it's a nice feature of Ada that you can
write 'readable'
> code, but IMHO Ada takes a lot longer to learn, there are more
constructs,
> keywords, etc...  In a word, the language is more complicated, yet not
> necessarily more powerfull (hope I don't get flamed for this :-)).
In C you'd
> have one while loop, and you'd put your condition in the while
expression and
> that's it.  Nothing more to learn about it!
> What's your opinion on this?

Of course Ada takes longer to learn than C. Ada is a high-level
language (averaging 41 statements to implement a function point) and C
is a low-level language (128 statements/function point). Ada has
packages, private types, exceptions, generics, tasks, protected
objects, block statements, fixed-point types, user-defined numeric
types, true enumeration types, true arrays, and record types with
discriminants, none of which are found in C. C just has integers,
floating-point numbers, pointers, and functions, so of course Ada takes
longer to learn.

As for being "more powerfull", there are different forms of power. The
terseness of C that you refer to is one of its weaknesses, while Ada's
readability is one of the most powerful qualities a language can have.

Ada makes creating and using abstractions easier than C (packages for
encapsulation and information hiding; private types for information
hiding).

Ada makes code reuse easier than C (packages for namespace control;
generics for tailoring).

Ada makes handling exceptional situations easier and more readable
(exceptions and exception handlers; block statements for localizing
scope).

Ada makes concurrent code much easier and more readable (tasks,
protected objects, time types).
--
Jeff Carter
"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."
-- Monty Python and the Holy Grail


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