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From: rogoff@sccm.Stanford.EDU (Brian Rogoff)
Subject: Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again,
 Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation)
Date: 1996/10/14
Message-ID: <ROGOFF.96Oct14091421@sccm.Stanford.EDU>#1/1
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references: <325BC3B3.41C6@hso.link.com>
 <Dz2B9H.9HD.0.-s@inmet.camb.inmet.com>
organization: /u/rogoff/.organization
reply-to: rogoff@sccm.stanford.edu
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-10-14T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Dave <dave@gte.net> writes:
   Brian Rogoff wrote:
   > While I agree with you that Java is mostly an improvement over C++, and
   > I rather like it as a language, I don't see too many advantages that
   > Java has over Ada. Garbage collection is a big one, but some would 
   > disagree.
   <snip> 
   > I'm curious, what are the advantages that the Java language has over 
   > Ada 95, in your opinion?
   > 

   Garbage collection, by itself, is significant enough for one to
   seriously consider choosing Java over Ada for projects which do not
   require low-level timing control.  

Maybe, but IMO its other features are significant enough for it to compensate 
for its 'deficiencies', where here I assume that lack of standard GC is a 
deficiency. As I said, I generally like GC, and find that I am more productive 
with it, but Ada does not have many of the weaknesses that make programming in 
C or C++ so painful. We shall likely see more Ada implementations with garbage 
collection in the future, in addition to the one that exists now, so I am 
not too troubled by this.

Incidentally, I strongly disagree with your point about choosing Java over Ada 
for any non-"low-level-timing-control" project. Java is a work-in-progress. 
Native code compilers are scarce, and will take a long time to mature. And on 
the purely "linguistic" side, no generics yet. This is a pain for me, because 
I use generics a lot. 

   <snip>

   Personally, however, Java would not be my first choice among languages
   with garbage collectors.  According to the data that I have seen, Eiffel
   is an inherently more productive language than Java, and, like Ada, it
   has a wide variety of features to promote "error-free" programming.  (Of
   course, Java does have an advantage in that it has better third party
   support than Eiffel.)

Hey, if you want to kidnap the thread, you ought to rename it to "Eiffel vs 
Ada 95" ;-). And I think that one has been done to death already. I personally 
like having *packages* in addition to types. Eiffelists like to just have 
classes, but then have LACE or CECIL or whatever in addition. You can have it. 
I do like Eiffel's assertions though.

-- Brian