Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died)

[softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng)]

Preben Randhol <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message news:<slrnbbpe3n.3o1.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no>...
> soft-eng wrote:
> > gautier_niouzes@hotmail.com (Gautier) wrote in message news:<17cd177c.0305011129.2eab5fb8@posting.google.com>...
> > 
> >> You simply ignore the huge debugging time provided
> >> by poorly-typed languages and its effective relation to
> >> job safety. So what ?
> > 
> > No -- having worked on reasonably large projects
> > in C, I can say that with professional programmers
> > with experience in a language like C, this
> > simply ceases to be an issue.  *MOST* bugs
> > in a professional C project have nothing to do
> > with type safety.  
> 
> This is utter hogwash and it is a great folly to depend on the
> infallibility of humans!

Thanks for proving my point!

Here we have a clearly novice user, who has been fed
the impression Ada solves the problem of fallible humans.

Imagine his surprise when he slowly progresses to serious
programming, and starts to discover that all of his logic
errors will continue to stay logic errors, Ada or no Ada.
And the ultimate solution for those logic errors will
come from -- horrors, fallible humans.

Of course, for freshmen programmers whose biggest problem is
getting the types right, Ada is clearly useful.  No doubts
about that.  Also for those who are never going to
progress to any programming that requires something more
complex than getting the types right.