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From: "Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96" <condicma@PWFL.COM>
Subject: Re: Fortran or Ada?
Date: 1998/09/23
Message-ID: <98092311025801@psavax.pwfl.com>#1/1
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Sender: Ada programming language <INFO-ADA@LISTSERV.NODAK.EDU>
Comments: To: templon@visar.physast.uga.edu
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Date: 1998-09-23T00:00:00+00:00
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Jeff Templon <templon@VISAR.PHYSAST.UGA.EDU> writes:
>one other word on Ada ... it is a very complex language.  Take a look
>at Cohen's "Ada as a Second Language" book and compare it Metcalf
>and Reid's F95 book!  Cohen is not spending time on elementary concepts
>either.
>
>So Ada loses in this respect : there is a lot of language to know.
>This makes it more difficult to write programs, unless one invests
>the time to learn the language well.  This amount of time would
>be less for Fortran.
>
    I regularly teach a beginning course in Ada for our engineers and
    it takes about two 4 hour sessions. I get them up to speed with
    the basic data type concepts, flow-of-control mechanisms,
    subprograms and packages. I talk only minimally about tasks,
    generics and other complex features, just so they know these
    features exist. By the end of the class, my students are able to
    write most of the sorts of functions they used to do in Fortran or
    C.

    I'll give you that there are *lots* of features to Ada. I'll even
    concede that some of the features are complex and difficult to
    understand or use correctly. But my experience is that it is not
    hard for engineers to learn to use the language effectively,
    provided they don't approach it with a bad attitude. (I've had
    students who took my class for the express purpose of arguing with
    me about why language XYZ was cool and why did they have to learn
    Ada when everyone knows that it sucks :-)

    I have not used Fortran in so many years that it would be unfair
    for me to make any statements about Fortran as it is today. But my
    recollection was that Fortran had its own dark corners of
    obscurity as well. Mostly, I used the easy to understand subset of
    it unless there was some reason to get more complex. I think that
    is the way most of us use any language - including English :-)

    MDC
Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer     Voice:     561.796.8997
Pratt & Whitney GESP, M/S 731-95, P.O.B. 109600  Fax:       561.796.4669
West Palm Beach, FL, 33410-9600                  Internet:  CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
=============================================================================
    "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
    one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore
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        --  G.B. Shaw
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