RE: Ada The Best Language?

RE: Ada The Best Language?

[Vinzent Hoefler]

Original Message From Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>

>What is the superior feature that justifies the creation of C++ at
>a time where Ada were already long available ?

Kind of backwards compatibility, I guess. It looks like C.


Vinzent.

Re: Ada The Best Language?

[Alfred Hilscher]

Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
> 
> Original Message From Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>
> 
> >What is the superior feature that justifies the creation of C++ at
> >a time where Ada were already long available ?
> 
> Kind of backwards compatibility, I guess. It looks like C.

Oh, I asked for the "superior feature" not for the "greatest mistake"
;-)

Re: Ada The Best Language?

[nicolas]

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There are a lot of excellent C libraries (commercial or not) that it would
be stupid to rewrite just for the 'beauty of the language'
If you make an extended use of them, which makes perfect sense, writing all
pragma import and defining appropriate types can be an awfully boring job.
Ada is still not very good for that, and that certainly prevent its use for
some projects.


"Alfred Hilscher" <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de> a �crit dans le message
news: 3B56FBAA.D7C010C9@icn.siemens.de...
>
>
> Vinzent Hoefler wrote:
> >
> > Original Message From Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>
> >
> > >What is the superior feature that justifies the creation of C++ at
> > >a time where Ada were already long available ?
> >
> > Kind of backwards compatibility, I guess. It looks like C.
>
> Oh, I asked for the "superior feature" not for the "greatest mistake"
> ;-)

Re: RE: Ada The Best Language?

[Ted Dennison]

In article <3B5FDFA0@MailAndNews.com>, Vinzent Hoefler says...
>
>Original Message From Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>
>
>>What is the superior feature that justifies the creation of C++ at
>>a time where Ada were already long available ?
>
>Kind of backwards compatibility, I guess. It looks like C.

That's close. I believe the original reason was an attempt to drag C coders
kicking and screaming into the modern era. So they created an OO language that
used C syntax, still understood some C sources, and precompiled down to C
(originally).

For the most part, I'd say its been successful. The general public does seem to
slowly be getting weaned from those crappy old software practices they used to
love. You don't hear much serious argument *against* strong typing anymore, like
you used to 5 years ago. All the well-reasoned design decisions of Ada are being
slowly accepted, and these days the firmest ground a troll can find to stand on
is roughly "yeah, Ada's good, but C++ is nearly there". 

It would still have been beter if someone could somehow have made all those C
coders go "cold turkey" and use something better founded, like Ada. But the DoD
actually tried to do that, and failed. The most workable poicly is probably just
to chip them off slowly.

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Re: Ada The Best Language?

[Colin Paul Gloster]

In article <CME57.725$Y47.8615@www.newsranger.com>, Ted Dennison wrote:
"In article <3B5FDFA0@MailAndNews.com>, Vinzent Hoefler says...
 >
 >Original Message From Alfred Hilscher <Alfred.Hilscher@icn.siemens.de>
 >
 >>What is the superior feature that justifies the creation of C++ at
 >>a time where Ada were already long available ?
 >
 >Kind of backwards compatibility, I guess. It looks like C.
  
  That's close. I believe the original reason was an attempt to drag C coders
  kicking and screaming into the modern era. [..]"

Closer. Bjarne Strousup would have had Algol 68 with Classes if he had his
way but went for C with Classes to get any sort of uptake.

RE: Ada The Best Language?

[Robert C. Leif, Ph.D.]

From: Bob Leif
To: Marin David Condic et al.
Although I like the results of Professor McCormick's experiment, they are
clearly insufficient for making billion dollar and national security
decisions. One major problem is that, it is virtually impossible to do a
double blind experiment where neither the instructor nor the student knew
the name of the programming language that was being taught. The concept of a
placebo is also totally inappropriate for this type of study.

I suspect that the only way to compensate for the lack of these two basic
tools is to increase the study size and expense. If we had parallel classes
for the languages and selected the students at random for each language,
meaningful results could be obtained. In the case of the other languages, we
would have to find faculty members who really believed in the other
languages and had a level of enthusiasm equal to Professors McCormick,
Feldman, Dewar, etc.

One way to obtain funding for this type of study is to include gender as a
variable. If we can prove that the C class of languages are sexist, we have
got it made. I would not be surprised if this were true.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Marin David Condic
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 6:51 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Ada The Best Language?


One more time with the links because they are *really* worth reading as
possibly the *only* "controlled" experiment in software productivity. (Maybe
there are others, but this is the only one I know of where we are taling
about doing the *same* project more than once with a multitude of developers
each taking a stab at it so that it has some statistical significance and
the only variable being language.)

http://www2.dynamite.com.au/aebrain/ADACASE.HTM
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2000/aug/mccormick.asp

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/


"Mark Lundquist" <up.yerz@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:hhh67.385587$p33.7760908@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
>
> "Larry Hazel" <lhazel@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5655F0.3442DBF1@mindspring.com...
>
> > Is Dr. McCormic the professor with the software controlling model
trains?
> If
> > so, I believe his data showed an enormous productivity increase over C
> (C++
> > ????).
>
> Yes -- he's the train guy!
> -- mark
>
>
>

Re: RE: Ada The Best Language?

[Ted Dennison]

In article <mailman.995950476.32432.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org>, Robert C. Leif,
Ph.D. says...
>One way to obtain funding for this type of study is to include gender as a
>variable. If we can prove that the C class of languages are sexist, we have
>got it made. I would not be surprised if this were true.

Heck, while we're at it, let's call C racist, homophobic, and anti-semetic too.
:-)

I searched in vain for the smilely face on this paragraph. I guess you just
forgot to put it in. There's no way you could be serious.

If you are though, I have a feeling I don't want to hear the explanation...


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