Re: Ada requires too much typing!

[Warren <ve3wwg@gmail.com>]

Fritz Wuehler expounded in
news:0620a415e6bbc1a5629e906e27bec5cb@msgid.frell.theremailer.net: 

> Like anything you need to strike a balance. As many people know, Ada
> was designed to be read. ..
> 
> People mostly lack discipline and gravitate towards lazy practices.
> C++ coders often call Ada (if they even hear about it) verbose. It's
> silly, but I really don't care. It's their problem, not ours. Sloppy
> code can be written in any language, and unfortunately it's proven in
> practice.

I don't mind C++ too much, until you start looking at 
"templates". To me, the "templates" idea seemed like
a bag on the side to solve the generic problem. C/C++ 
already had substantial syntax up to that point. 
Then templates was shoe-horned into the compiler and
the linker was mangled to make it all work. Even 
more, I find myself with a gag reflex whenever 
I look at STL use.

Ada's generics are also somewhat tricky (the subject of
generics is complex), but it seems an order of magnitude 
cleaner and simpler to understand. Certainly using 
instantiated code is far simpler. Also for the end reader,
it is far easier to read, with generics.

> Still, sloppy code in some languages is easier to understand
> than others, but Ada makes it harder than average to write sloppy code
> that's also wrong. 

One feature I love is the enumerated type in Ada. As long as
you code each when clause in a case statement and avoid "when
others =>", it makes extending an application a breeze. You can
then add one new element to that enumerated type and then the 
compiler will point out every point in the project that needs 
your attention.

> There's also the matter of aesthetics. Most programming languages
> (especially C and Java and their offspring) are just ugly.

I've been using C for almost my entire career. So when it is
properly formatted, it doesn't look ugly to me. But I have 
seen a lot of ugly C/C++ code. The worst example was an XMODEM
(I'm dating myself) program using macros to make the C code
look like PASCAL!! It was macro'd to death. I finally ran it
through cpp and refactored it, in order to make it useful. 
That original code probably still exists somewhere out on 
the net (maybe SIMTEL archives?)  Scary that.

I do find that reading someone else's Ada code is far breezier 
than C/C++/java code. IMO, C# has made it extra ugly with 
the new syntax embedded in it. I like Ada's sparse use
of symbols (no {} or [] for example).

> I prefer
> ALGOL and its derivatives, in my view they're prettier, cleaner, and
> better. To each his own, but don't expect me to read your crap if you
> code it in C, C++, or Java!

Perl is the worst. You'd have to pay me well to look at someone's
perl code. ;-)

Warren