Re: Ada and Java/C++

[kalvin.news@gmail.com]

Let's elaborate this subject a bit more. Facts:
- Embedded software and hardware deployed everywhere
- Software projects are getting bigger and more complex all the time
- Software is getting close to people each day
- Mission critical software is entering our daily lives in form on automation (like Google cars, home automation, nursing systems etc. just name it)

1. Ada (2005 and 2012) is ready for prime time
2. Ada is designed for mission critical and embedded software
3. Java and C are common languages in embedded systems
4. Java and C are weak languages for mission critical system eg. poor type checking, exception handling, tasks are not native in the language etc.
- C is notoriously poor language in terms of type checking, pointer arithmetics, arrays, packages, just name it
- Although efforts in Misra C, it is still C with its faults and shortcomings
- Java has some improvements to C, but it still can be improved
- Java is not designed for mission critical systems
5. Ada programmers are hard to find
- For example, DoD has faced the problem of finding Ada programmers, DoD has been force into situation that mission critical software is being implemented in Java
- Java and C programmers see Ada as a complex language
- Ada is perceived as military language
- Ada is perceived as a complex and heavy language

As you may see from list above, the points 1&2, and points 3-5 are contradicting. Could the situation be improved somehow, so that existing Java and C programmers can adopt Ada-mindset more easily, and can the Java and C syntax be fixed to allow more robust software engineering.

My suggestion here is to introduce Ada's good virtues for C and Java programmers in syntax that is familiar to most of the software engineers.

As many writers has well pointed out, it may not be easy or possible to represent full Ada features in Java and C syntax. What is required here, it that we retain as much Java and C syntax as possible, and then extend it and fix it as necessary - type definition, dangling else problem and switch-case-break are a good but simple examples of this.

- Calvin