Re: ada paper critic

[Immanuel Scholz <news@kutzsche.net>]

Ted Dennison wrote:

> Immanuel Scholz wrote:
> True. Unfortunately, all his points range from 180 degrees wrong to just
> ignorant. When someone is so wrong so consistently over so much stuff,
> you have to think that we are dealing with a case where someone has an
> agenda and it trying to make the facts fit it instead of the other way
> around.

I got most of the real good postings in response to his bad one. This gives 
me two validations:
First, he is either a good psychological skilled troll or a lucky one.
Second, this newsgroup rocks because of not starting a boring flamewar on 
top of this. :-)


>> (Nevertheless, I think that giving the same syntax to Arrays and
>> functions is good, not bad.)
> 
> We've actually had a lot of discussion here about that. Almost everyone
> who ever complains about it is an ex-C programmer who's main problem
> always boils down to "it doesn't look like C".

I am an (ex-)C programmer too, and most part of the time I complain about 
sitting hours before large trees of code and change occourences of a[b] 
into a(i) because a became a function instead of an array. ;-)

Another similar problem:
Are there any kind of "property" like in delphi or "Trolltechs way of C++" 
in Ada - means, can I hide the fact, that an access to a variable or 
member-variable is just a function call and via versa?


> I have very little patience for people who have problems with Ada not
> looking like C. 

I remember this was a very large thread in a newsgroup some years before 
when someone complaint, that C simple does not looks like Pascal ;-). Then 
the time for 

#define begin {
#define Begin {
#define BEGIN {
#define end; }
#define End; }
#define END; }

started. THIS was bad times... ;-)


> Ada was just about the most thouroughly designed
> language ever, while C was thrown together in a lab over the weekend.

And second: Ada was not such a stupid overloaded commitee-bullshit like 
ALGOL or even IPSec. (Although I believe in Ada are some useless things 
too).


> On the other hand, most of the approaches C took were based on either
> historical accidents, spontaneious whims, or whatever was the quickest
> hack to solve a language problem that day. Perhaps one or two good
> things came out of it, but there's no good coherent design in there at
> all. The only reason people are still using it is that the lab guys who
> created it built the first Unix with it, not because the language itself
> is any good.

There comes a dangerous spirit of coolness with C. Someone described it 
like this:

- First you are a newbie. Then all programming languages looks very 
complicated and you choose a descriptive one like BASIC.
- Then you are a newbie hacker with an amazing overestimation of self. 
(Look at www.hydixos.de for an example to all german capables of you ;-)
Then you are searching for a cool-looking language. Cool-looking is nothing 
you used before and what stupid newbies use! It must be a real cryptic like 
C.
- At the last you become aware of the huge problems with C, but then you 
are used to them and usually are too lazy to switch. Then you start to 
search extensive for any reason C is a good choice, although you KNOW it is 
not. You will clutch yourself on every straw you see which might be any 
argument in favour of choosing C, completly disable your judgement.


Immanuel Scholz