Re: Java vs Ada 95 (Was Re: Once again, Ada absent from DoD SBIR solicitation)

[rogoff@sccm.Stanford.EDU (Brian Rogoff)]

jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) writes:
   rogoff@sccm.Stanford.EDU (Brian Rogoff) writes:

   > 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.

   I don't disagree that GC is great in most circumstances.  I disagree that
   Java has it and Ada does not in any current environment where Java "the
   language" is implemented.  So, Java having GC in this context is just
   plain irrelevant.

Yes, I am being a bit sloppy here. I think it is fairly safe to say though 
that no one would accept a Java without GC as being "Java (TM)", whereas 
an Ada 95 compiler sans GC would still be Ada 95. So in this fuzzy sense, 
I think we can agree that Java has it, Ada doesn't. If in a few years, most 
Ada 95 compilers have GC, or if there is a way to provide a decent GC 
capability as a library and it gets widely used, then this would change.

In any case, others have also pointed out that many of Ada's other features 
compensate for the lack of GC. And as I do not work in real-time or embedded 
systems, I am not qualified to discuss the merits of RTGC, so I defer to the 
wisdom of others, who clearly don't want it forced on them. 

   > Simplicity of the threading model might be another.

   It's way too primitive and low level.  Some seem to think of this as
   simply "simpicity"...

Here I agree, though I think Ada tasking could have been simpler and more 
powerful. Backwards compatibility with Ada 83 and all that I suppose. I 
hope future revisors will be given a little more room to change things.

   > I'm curious, what are the advantages that the Java language has over 
   > Ada 95, in your opinion? 

   Hype and buzz and the fact that "sheep look up".  

Now, now! I could say "widespread commercial support, and market acceptance" 
too. These are certainly good reasons to use Java, but I specifically excluded 
them from my question.

   Technically? Nothing.

That's what I think too, but I wanted to know if mg thought there was 
something important. If it is Java being Object.Method(Arg1,...,ArgN) versus
Method(..., ArgJ'Class, ...), that won't count to me either ;-). I suppose 
we could dig up the mutually recursive interpackage types argument again, 
but I don't know if I could stand it!

-- Brian