Re: memory leakages with Ada?

["Pat Rogers" <progers@classwide.com>]

"DPH" <rally2xs@compuserve.com> wrote in message
news:00t69uso35hmunf5mpnfn37ggd9q59tctu@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 16 Mar 2002 15:51:05 +0000 (UTC), Preben Randhol
> <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 16 Mar 2002 09:56:41 -0500, DPH wrote:
> >>
> >> this goes back to a post I made last month.  I'm just wondering if Ada
> >> is all that much less error prone when you start comparing it with C++
> >> development environments in the wildly popular platforms of Windows
> >> and Linux, but especially windows.  There are just scads of tools to
> >> do about everything (except reliably find the memory leaks of C++,
> >> although there may be - and I just haven't run across it yet) and
> >> those tools are generally cheaper due to economy of scale.
> >
> >Ask yourself: Why do so many tools exist for C++?
>
> 'Cuz tthey're necessary.
>
> 'Cuz there's such a huge user base that they could make money on them
> even if they weren't necessary - they would still be convenient and
> therefore saleable.
>
> The question is - do they compensate enough for C++'s inherent
> tendancy to fool programmers into doing something ugly, coupled with
> the hoarde of people that know the language, to make them viable
> competiton for Ada in some limited programming environments like
> Windows and Unix/Linux?  Can you get an equally reliable program from
> an experienced C++ prgrammer with sophisticated tools that you get
> from an experienced Ada programmer for which the same tools don't
> exist?

Not sure that works, though, for two reasons:

        1) The tools are built into the language for the Ada side, so for the
most part they do exist and are comparably priced nowadays,

        2) The better question might be -- "At what price can these more or less
equally reliable programs be created?"

There is plenty of evidence that Ada is much more cost-effective than C for the
application domain Ada was designed for.  Unfortunately I don't know of much
meaningful comparison data for Ada vs. C++.    I know what my "gut" tells me,
but that isn't so useful in this context.