Re: Ada The Best Language?

["chris.danx" <chris.danx@ntlworld.com>]

> > codesavvy wrote:
> > >
> > > substantial increase in productivity or it should solve a class(es) of
> > > programming problems that another language can't.  I know the second
> > > reason doesn't necessarily mean the language is vastly superior for
> > > all programming problems but it is something to consider.  There may
> > > be some studies that show developers to be significantly more
> > > productive.  If there are I would be interested in reviewing such
> > > studies.  Also I would be interested in those programming problems
> > > that Ada 95 solves that C++ can't.
> >
> > How do _you_ write multitasking/multithreading applications in C++ ?
> > With a lot (really a lot) of system calls ? Very, very portable ;-)
>
> Do you have a metric for measuring the increase in productivity that
> this brings about?  I hope the compiler is consistent from OS to OS
> for Ada.  How often is portability from one system to the next
> required so that all one has to do is recompile and everything will
> work the same needed?  Not very often, almost never IMO.

I missed that first time!

I'm no expert, but portability is an important consideration (to me and to
others).  In some cases with Ada 95 it is possible to eliminate the need to
change an application at all, though this is rare (but doable!).  In many cases,
there is the possibility to wrap the dependancies in a few wee modules and
change those.  While you can do this in C(++) it's a lot harder to maintain and
even get right.

With C++ you get wide variety of implementations which don't agree and fudgeing
and ugly hacks to support it's OO system.  This can b*gg*r porting programs in
C++.  An Ada programmer should (and usually would) be aware of any ambigous
compiler related behaviour and devise a manner to deal with that behaviour
accordingly (or note it, to allow porting to be smoother), IMO.  Portability is
largely a no no with C++.

Ada 95 on the other hand gives you the ability to specify the layout of
structures with greater precision (in general).  This gives it an edge over C++.

Don't get me wrong Ada's crappy for somethings (C++ would be crap too), and for
such problems something more appropriate is used (e.g. compilers -- you can
write a compiler in Ada 95 or C++, but an FPL can express it more concisely and
efficiently, and for me the FPL wins here).


> BTW I like
> the Ada 95 concurrancy model a lot.
>
> >Or
> > by using a specialised Library ? Portable ? Readable ?
> >
>
> I have addressed portability.  Do we have a metric for readable that
> we could use?  Or is it just another opinion.

No you haven't.  You just said "hey, who cares about portability? No One, that's
who!" which is completely ignorant and contrary to fact.  A lot of ppl care
about portability (e.g. me, Sun, and a whole host of other ppl), and just
because it isn't a consideration to you doesn't mean it isn't a consideration to
others.


~Danx

p.s. for somethings portability is impossible and throwing a problem like that
at anyone shows ignorance and arrogance.  In other words don't use examples for
which portability is nigh on impossible, otherwise you'll end up with John
Prescott Syndrome (i.e. egg on your face).