Re: "Size" of Ada vs. C++

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

You need not even go that far - although I agree that the
constructor/destructor thingie is so confusing and filled with "I before E
except after C..." kinds of rules that you could probably write a novel on
that subject alone. Just consider the rules about infix operators and
expression evaluation - throw in side effects just for grins - and see how
fast you've asked for an arcane, cryptic, and turgid monograph be written on
the subject.

Feature for feature, C++ may in some sense be smaller - no tasks for one
thing. However, in terms of all the options and semantics of the features it
*does* have, I think one would have to conclude that it is definitely a
bigger language. Perhaps a half-way fair comparison might be based on the
size of the compiler front-ends required for both languages? (Although any
comparison of any code size is extremely problematic - as we've discussed
here before.) The weight of the ISO standard documents as a metric?)

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/


"Ted Dennison" <dennison@telepath.com> wrote in message
news:bMIy7.30243$ev2.36939@www.newsranger.com...
>
> Then explain in one simple paragraph how C++ constructors and destructors
work
> (how they are invoked, what you have to do to make one "default", how you
> prevent their use in parameter passing or as implicit casts, how you have
to
> invoke the parent's constructors from the constructor of a child, how to
ensure
> all destructors in a object's type hierarchy get called during delete,
etc.)
> This is all stuff that is pretty much required for basic C++ programming,
and
> its more arcane and exception-riddled than most English spelling rules.
>
> If we throw out annex-based libraries as you suggest, Ada doesn't even
*have*
> constructors and destructors to talk about. :-)
>
> Or we can compare the "cast system" of the two languages. Ada's rule is
pretty
> simple: the types have to be derived from each other, or predefined
numeric
> types. C++ on the other hand, has at least 3 different types of cast, plus
an
> old fashioned implicit one. To make things more interesting, constructor
writers
> can inadvertently create new implicit ones if they aren't careful...
>
> I'm not saying all this extra stuff in C++ is *bad*. But there certianly
is way
> more of it.
>
> ---
> T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html
>
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