Re: Safe C++

[Chad Robert Meiners <meinersc@cse.msu.edu>]

On Wed, 19 Sep 2001, Brian Rogoff wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Richard Riehle wrote:
> > There is an interesting discussion on comp.lang.c++.moderated
> > in which the topic of a safe C++ is being argued.   Some Ada
> > enthusiasts might find it amusing.   A couple of posters even
> > suggested that, instead of trying to make C++ safe, perhaps they
> > needed a new language design to satisfy the need.   Apparently,
> > they never heard of Ada.
>
> Rather than just snipe from the side at people trying to do better, take
> a look at
>
> 	http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/cyclone/
>
> and consider that it certainly has some features which are arguably better
> than the Ada alternatives.

Which features are better than the Ada alternatives?

Cyclone doesn't appear to help reduce the number of pointers that the
programmer has to manage which I consider to be a major drawback with the
language.

> Putting my "Ada fan" hat on, I'd say that some of the work on region based
> memory management should find it's way into some Ada dialect, maybe even
> into the standard. And I really think pattern matching and some other
> features of modern (read HM-typed, functional/declarative) languages
> should find their way into an Ada successor. If only the Cyclone guys had
> started with Ada, or even the SPARK subset!
>
> It's really unfortunate that Ada hasn't spawned lots of research
> dialects, like C family languages have.
>
> -- Brian
>
>
>
- Chad R. Meiners