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: f891f,9d58048b8113c00f X-Google-Attributes: gidf891f,public X-Google-Thread: 10261c,2e71cf22768a124d X-Google-Attributes: gid10261c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,9d58048b8113c00f X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,2e71cf22768a124d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: The Amorphous Mass Subject: Re: next "big" language?? (disagree) Date: 1996/06/04 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 158456161 distribution: world references: <4p0fdd$4ml@news.atlantic.net> <4p1l65$35qi@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> x-sender: robinson@green.weeg.uiowa.edu content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII organization: University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal.misc,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-06-04T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: On 4 Jun 1996, Peter Hermann wrote: > Kurt Johmann (johmann@moal.com) wrote: > : Programming languages are almost completely subjective, because the only > > I strongly disagree Why? If they were not subjective then programming languages would all be very similar. > : minds apparently like that kind of enforced discipline (masochist types, > : perhaps :-), but to my mind it was a build-your-own-straightjacket-and- > : wear-it kind of approach to programming. > [snip] > I can see no advantage to allow e.g. a memory overwrite error, > by accident, or, e.g. an outside range value at run time or > a wrong subroutine call due to bad parameter profile. > When I decide, as a programmer, that a peculiar type or > variable may have a value in the range from 1 to 9, can you please > explain me why it should be useful to assign a value of 10 or > 4711 or -1234? > > btw: Ada is the first useful (and even readable) Pascal > with free compilers running on any platform _Any_ platform? You mean I could fire it up on my little 68020-powered Mac with its expansive 4MB of memory and galactic 80MB hard drive and enjoy the full benefits of Ada's rich set of features? Or is there a cost to having a language that does everything, an environment that does everything, and a compiler that does everything? My C compiler takes up 5.1MB on my hard drive and runs in just under 1MB of RAM. That's with full support for the Mac Toolbox and an object-oriented extention to the language, plus a class library for the Mac GUI and a nice debugger. Are there any Ada compilers that can say that? I think you're assuming that everyone is deveoping a huge, complex project with 100 teams of 100 programmers each working on mainframes with 350MHz Alphas and 256MB of RAM (OK, I'm exaggerating a little :-). Those of us lone programmers who put speed and space at a premium are willing to go hunting for stray pointers as a necessary cost of using a small, fast language. Besides, Ada is not the only big, safe, feature-laden, industrial-strength language out there. So obviously there are people who would agree wholeheartedly with your argument, but who would then disagree that Ada would be the best language to use for "professional" programming. The nature of that disagreement is, of course, subjective. - James "Good candidates for exceptions are situations james-robinson@uiowa.edu that do not occur under normal circumstances." -- Kevin J. Hopps