Re: ada-c++ productivity

[eachus@aries.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus)]

In article <11966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:

   C++ and Eiffel are full object-oriented languages; Ada is not....
   [lots deleted]

   "A language is object-oriented if and only if it satisfies the following
   requirements:

   - It supports objects that are data abstractions with an interface of named
     operations and a hidden local state

   - Objects have an associated type (class)

   - Types (classes) may inherit attributes from supertypes (superclasses)"

   Ada lacks attribute #3 and is therefore not an object-oriented language.
   Languages that satisfy the first two clauses but not the third are called
   by Cardelli and Wegner "object-based" languages; Ada is an object-based
   language.  C++ satisfies all three attributes... [more deleted]

   I guess you never heard of (Ada) derived types?  There are some
problems with using derived types to implement Smalltalk like class
heirarchies, these are being addressed in Ada 9X. There are also
people like me who prefer to build class heirarchies using generics,
and you build such heirarchies in a much different fashion than in
Smalltalk, but Ada is definitely an OOP.

   Now if you want to argue about whether multiple inheritance in Ada
(or any language) is a good idea, that is subject to debate.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...