Re: The stupidity of all the Ariane 5 analysts.

[donh@syd.csa.com.au (Don Harrison)]

This is a response to something posted to comp.lang.ada but not comp.lang.eiffel..

"Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" wrote:

:Robert Dewar wrote:
:> 
:> I would think experience would teach us to be very suspicious of any
:> claims by anyone to have a silver bullet panacea wjhen it comes to
:> software engineering for large systems.
:> 
:> However tools and techniques that help, even a little bit, are welcome
:> even if they are not a panacea (I consider Ada to be in this category,
:> and I always find it annoying when people advertise Ada as being
:> a silver bullet panacea).

Me too. :)

:I would go farther; I am suspicious of anyone who advocates a particular
:languages and can't tell me anything in the language that he dislikes.

Presumably, you're talking about me. :)

If you think I never have any criticisms of Eiffel, you're mistaken. What may 
surprise you even more is that I sometimes have positive things to say about
Ada! - for example, two recent posts to comp.lang.eiffel under the subject
"Ennumerations in Eiffel" (31.7.97 and 1.8.97). These included two criticisms
of Eiffel and one positive comment about Ada.

Also, was my agreement with criticisms of Eiffel WRT use of assertions and GC
in hard realtime software a glowing endorsement of Eiffel? I think not.

:If he can't identify flaws, either he's too inexperienced to rely on or 
:isn't perceptive enough. 

Thank you. :)

:*any* programming language will have warts, 

Eiffel has its flaws; it's just that Ada has about 50 times more. :)

:and a real professional will recognize them and have strategies for dealing 
:with them.

Agree.


BTW, one the few areas where Ada is streets ahead of Eiffel (and most languages), 
IMO, is standardisation. While Eiffel does have a standard language and libraries, 
not all vendors comply with them. Part of the problem is that there is no 
official certification of Eiffel compilers and, hence, no validation suite as 
there is in Ada. Obviously, this causes portability problems. 

Just because someone is biased, doesn't mean they can't also be honest and 
objective. Also, one can be biased with or without justification.


P.S. It shows considerably more intestinal fortitude to criticise someone to 
their face rather than where you don't think they'll hear you. Even if they 
don't agree with what you have to say, they may at least respect you for not
saying it behind their back. :(


Don.
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Don Harrison             donh@syd.csa.com.au