Re: problems/risks due to programming language

[pierson@encore.com (Dan L. Pierson)]

In article <5017@csv.viccol.edu.au> dougcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller) writes:
   Valid but utterly vacuous point, as ADA *was* designed to provide maximal
   support for software engineering.  I suppose its possible that another
   (hidden?) design goal was to "have everything".  So what?

   >    Software engineering can be done in any language, including C.

   Irrelevant --- the claim here is that ADA provides *maximal* *support* for
   the software engineering process.  Like, if I said "Air travel is the
   fastest way to get to another city" and you said "You don't have to go by
   `plane.  You could go by car, or even on foot", then I'd look at you with a
   slightly glazed expression, right?   Sorry to labor this, but I've seen the
   above point made *too* many times.

This bit of ADA mythology (or dogma) has also been made too many times
for me to remain silent.  Yes, ADA did have a goal of maximal support
for the software engineering process.  However other goals (and the
committee requirements and design process) largely subverted that goal
by producing an excessively large, over-specified monster.

You can certainly do software engineering in ADA, it is in most ways a
better language for the purpose than C, but other languages such as
Modula-3, Eiffel, and maybe Turing provide at least the software
engineering benefits of ADA (though not all the "nifty" features*) in
languages that are small enough to be useable, learnable, teachable,
and efficiently implementable in less than a decade.

I'm not interested in another C vs. ADA vs. my-favorite-language war,
but I'm just plain tired of the line that ADA is equivalent to
software engineering because the DOD and those who base their careers
on it say so.

*In fact, some of these "nifty" features present more opportunity for
misuse, and thus software engineering drawbacks, than benefits.
Operator overloading comes to mind...
--

                                            dan

In real life: Dan Pierson, Encore Computer Corporation, Research
UUCP: {talcott,linus,necis,decvax}!encore!pierson
Internet: pierson@encore.com