From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,3ccb707f4c91a5f2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation) Date: 1996/10/14 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 189435661 sender: news@organon.com (news) references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com> organization: Organon Motives, Inc. newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-10-14T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <325FF8D0.6660@io.com> davedave@io.com writes: > However, suppose you were in the position of a software engineer who > needed to choose between Java and Ada. Suppose also that garbage > collection was high on your list of "must haves". Well, you could wait > until Intermetric's Applet Magic gets out of beta (and becomes available > on your platform). Since *Java* is beta, that should either a) eliminate Java (and thus AdaMagic as well) or b) be irrelevant. I mean the JVM is a beta spec., so all the JVMs out there may not even be Java in another 6 months (shades of C++)! In reality, this is probably overly dramatic, but you get the idea. > Or you could pay someone to write an add-on garbage collector for > your compiler and hope that they finish on-time. Or you could get a > Java (or Eiffel or Smalltalk or Lisp) system and start working now. Well, not Java - not if you are worried about "beta" sw. > If you were in this situation, then from your viewpoint, it might make > sense to say that Java has garbage collection and Ada does not. Nope. Not even a little sense. Since it depends on Java not being "beta", it makes absolutely no sense. > garbage collection. *** The world would be a much better place if we > would all express ourselves with greater clarity and precision, so > thanks to Jon -- and everyone else -- for pointing out my error. *** Hey, you're welcome! :-) > BTW: I have heard that, for C++, someone has written a garbage > collector which can be added to almost any C++ program. Would it be any > more difficult to do the same thing for Ada95? There are a "few". And, for example, the Boehm collector should work about as well on Ada95 (say GNAT, in particular) as it does on C++ impls. I think I recall a discussion of this particular point on the GC mail list. > I would certainly look forward to such a product. IMHO, memory > management is something that a machine should do (whenever possible) > -- freeing up humans to do things which require more skill and > creativity. Sounds about right to me. /Jon -- Jon Anthony Organon Motives, Inc. Belmont, MA 02178 617.484.3383 jsa@organon.com