Re: Ada and robots

[jsa@alexandria.organon.com (Jon S Anthony)]

In article <9706242128.AA09652@stealth.ctron.com> Huy Vo <vo@CTRON.COM> writes:

> >a) No one is dumb enough to suggest Ada programs are by nature some
> >how bug free.  So, you are just giving a silly strawman
> 
> Cool; Ada is not as safe as I thought it was; so, when I board a Boeing
> I should think twice.

Whatever floats your boat.


> As a C programmer, I know it better than anyone; so I have been
> religiously checking every malloc()'s return and proceed
> accordingly.  What do you do when you call new and new fails?

Whatever is appropriate.

> You rely on the runtime system telling you what line it fails?

No.  All such stuff should be isolated with a non-lowlevel interface.
Inside the implementation exception handler(s) take the appropriate
action.  Outside, no one cares or needs to care.


> Error checking is an attitude; it's not a feature of the language.

Yes and no.  I prefer to have whatever reasonable extra support there
is.


> On the contrary, C constitutes the low level base for Ada programs,

??? This is incomprehensible.

> the work horse, the "unsafe" layer (NT, UNIX, LINUX, etc...) without
> which it's impossible to build "safe" applications.

This is outright nonsense.


> believe in C because everyone (well, almost) writes in C; I believe
> in C because it works just fine for me.

A VB programmer offers the same justification.  As does the assembly
as does ..., i.e., this is no justification at all.


/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
OMI, Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
"Nightmares - Ha!  The way my life's been going lately,
 Who'd notice?"  -- Londo Mollari