Re: Language support for flexible handling of system-detected errors.

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

"Ingo Marks" <adv@region-nord.de> wrote in message
news:a8h129$cr6$02$1@news.t-online.com...
>
> The question is: Do you want to write comfortable software or do you want
> to write software comfortably?
>
Any reason it can't be both?


> Of course, MSVC++ is a comfortable environment for writing C++
> applications. But are the applications you write comfortable for your
> customer?
>
Reliable, usable, functional and desirable programs can be written in any
language - including C++ using MSVC++. Its just more work getting them there
than it might be using Ada.


> I think it is better to write reliable software with Ada and "simple"
tools
> like Xemacs editor and some Ada library than to use a pretty development
> environment which produces results of questionable quality.
>
"Pretty development environment" does not of necessity equate to
"questionable quality" of the end product. Certainly many things can be
accomplished with a simple editor and a command line compiler. That doesn't
guarantee "high quality" any more so than a spiffy IDE and large class
library is going to mean "low quality". No environment can make you write
good code.


> I have developed for many years in many programming languages, but Ada is
> the first language which helped me to a) reduce my programming time (about
> half compared to C++) and b) to produce really realiable code. I don't
like
> to use a compiler which I don't know to be error free or not. A computer
> science professor told me, that there is _no_ 100% error free C++ compiler
> in the world!
>
I will readily agree that (all other things being equal) Ada programming
speeds development over C/C++ programming. I've seen enough data to convince
me of that. The problem is that some given C++ (or Java or other language)
development environment that provides you with a large library of code to
leverage can quickly eliminate any advantage Ada has if the Ada environment
doesn't have a similar library. All other things are seldom equal. :-)

What makes you think that there are any 100% error free Ada compilers out
there? :-) Its impossible to prove that there are no errors in a compiler or
any other sufficiently complex piece of software. And yes, I've encountered
errors in every Ada compiler I've ever used. It might be the case that Ada
compilers - having run through validation - at least fully implement the
language and do so in a consistent way. It might be the case that C++
compilers don't adhere to the definition of C++ because they have not run
through a similar validation process. But that's a different thing than not
having any errors.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com