Re: Ada / C++ comparison paper

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@bpr.best.vwh.net>]

On Tue, 18 Dec 2001, Pat Rogers wrote:
> "Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
> > David C. Hoos wrote (in an e-mail to me):
> <snip>
> > The paper claims that code reuse is the critical benefit of OOP.
> > This is nonsense, implying, among other things, that OOP has
> > an "eat your spinach" flavor - that it's use in a project is primarily
> > for the purpose of aiding future projects. I would suggest that
> > OOP's critical benefit is run-time polymorphism.
>
> IMHO, the critical benefit of OOP is the supported separation of code that
> will change from code that need not.  Run-time polymorphism is the means to
> that end, not the end itself.

You can get this separation with a sufficiently powerful module system,
and even Ada (95) has one. This is one of the primary benefits of using
signatures in Ada. No OOP involved.

I kind of agree with Hyman here. "Kind of", because I think that OO is
really overrated and that given a choice between an OO language, like, say
Eiffel or Java, and a powerful enough non-OO language, like SML, or OCaml
without the O, I'd much prefer to work in the latter class :-) of
language. OO is mostly a good way to make a confusing mess with open
recursion, though I have found it convenient at times, and the convenience
comes from the run time dispatching, not so much from the incremental
programming aspects.

In any case, I think Hyman is a bit oversensitive to some of the ignorant
C++ bashing in this n.g. I don't think of C++ as being "a great step
backwards" as some people here have said, and I have made the point many
times that I think some amount of inference/automatic instantiation, like
what C++ has, would be a great thing in an Ada like language. I'd also be
happy with a bit more shorthand, like +:=, and a more distinct array
accessing syntax (like []), etc. Still, its an Ada newsgroup, and I
wonder how many times Hyman has complained about anti-Ada ignorance in
the C++ world...

-- Brian