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Date: Tue, 4 Oct 1994 23:00:23 EDT
Sender: Ada programming language <INFO-ADA@NDSUVM1.BITNET>
From: Ken Garlington <73672.2025@COMPUSERVE.COM>
Subject: Easily-Read C++?
Comments: To: "comp.lang.ada" <info-ada@vm1.nodak.edu>
Date: 1994-10-04T23:00:23-04:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Robin Rowe <cpp@NETCOM.COM> writes:

<< Here's how I read a piece of C++ code:

    if(!object)                  // "If not object [then]"
    {   cerr<<object.ErrorMsg(); // "output object's error
    }                            //  message,"
    else                         // "else"
    {   object++;                // "increment object."
    }

So what's unnatural about this? Sounds like English to me. >>

Not that I'm a C++ expert, but I have noticed that a lot of C/C++ code looks
like Greek to me. Certainly, that stuff on the right reads like English to me
(is this normal C style to comment every line?) but the stuff on the left I
have to think about a little. On the other hand:

   If Not(object) then
      Text_IO.Put_Line (Error_Message (corresponding_to => object));
   else
      object := object + 1;
   end if;

is easily read by _any_ engineer (never mind software engineer) on my project.
(Of course, I would have to explain what the "not" of a numeric value is,
maybe, but a more meaningful function name is probably a good idea in this
case.) In fact, it looks suspiciously like the English explanation of the C
code. Note that some of these engineers didn't take the math class where "++"
means "add one to the thing before the ++." However, "X = X + 1" is something
they got pretty early on. That colon hanging off the equal sign doesn't seem to
bother them much.

Has anyone tried a study like the following? Take some C++ code from Software
Development, or Embedded Systems Programming, or whatever. Write the Ada 9X
equivalent. Show the 9X code to C++ programmers who have never seen Ada, and
the C++ code to Ada programmers who haven't worked with C recently. Which set
of code would be understood more often?