Re: Ada The Best Language?

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

There is one other thing to bring up along these lines. Are there any
studies with hard data that C++ shows a productivity increase over
programming in C? The point is, the industry just simply doesn't do this
kind of study. If someone had such a study of C++ vs C, we could sit here
for months arguing over all the relevant factors and trying to decide if the
syntax of the language itself was the reason for the boost or if it was the
presence of libraries of code to be leveraged or was it changes in
technology, yada yada yada.

There is some anectdotal evidence to site that Ada is more productive than
C++. There are some reasons based on logic and analysis that indicate that
Ada *ought to be* more productive than C++. There are actually a few studies
that are at least half-way scientific that indicate Ada buys you
productivity (and error reduction). Dr. McCormic's study is the only one I
know of that comes close to a controlled experiment and *it* shows a
productivity increase. I think this may very well be more evidence than is
available to indicate that C++ is more productive than C - but would anybody
seriously challenge the latter? Why does Ada have to pass some test that C++
can't pass?

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Darren New" <dnew@san.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3B55FFD5.9927BD6@san.rr.com...
>
> This is a bogus question. People have provided a list of areas in which
> Ada makes programmers more productive than C++ does. For example, in the
> areas of portable real-time systems, portable multithreaded code,
> portable distributed programming, etc.
>
> There are other areas where Ada and C++ are approximately equivalent.
>
> Then you ask for hard evidence where Ada is superior to C++. Well,
> nobody is going to do a study where portable distributed multitasking is
> vital to success and code it in C++ and Ada just to see which works
> better. That's just silly.
>
> Show me hard evidence that drawing pie charts in Excel is easier than
> drawing pie charts by flogging the bits of the video card in raw C
> without any libraries? What? No evidence out there? Then surely Excel's
> no better than C for doing that.
>
> If your hypothetical managers aren't doing stuff where Ada is superior
> to C++, then they might not get "sufficient" productivity increase out
> of learning Ada as compared to knowing what they already know. So?
>
> --
> Darren New / Senior MTS & Free Radical / Invisible Worlds Inc.
>        San Diego, CA, USA (PST).  Cryptokeys on demand.
>           Only a WIMP puts wallpaper on his desktop.