Re: Ada in Iraq

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:ILWqa.15825$J27.12065@nwrdny02.gnilink.net...
> Wesley Groleau wrote:
> > I'd put it slightly differently: the same programmers
> > who screwed up because they tried to develop a system in
> > a language they weren't capable of learning, will
> > screw up a system in any language for the same reason.
>
> It's not really incapability of learning. It's a matter of
> trying to use a language with only a cursory understanding
> of it, instead of a deep one. When you do that, you're going
> to fail, or at least "succeed badly", because you will fail
> to use the features of the language to their best advantage.
> It's the old concept of being able to code Fortran in any
> language. Think of how many posts in this newsgroup criticize
> Ada newbies for trying to transliterate C into Ada instead of
> learning how things should be done properly in Ada. Now imagine
> them actually going off to build a system in that style.
>
> Without an expert in Ada around to supervise the training, the
> people learning Ada aren't going to know when they've learned
> enough about the language to use it properly.

Yes and no.

About 90% of programming in Ada is pretty much the same as programming in
any other decent language.  Most of the lines in Ada AREN'T rep specs or
tasking calls or instantiating generics.