"Size" of Ada vs. C++

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <87ofn8a9dv.fsf@deneb.enyo.de>, Florian Weimer says...
>
>I'm not sure if this is true if you look at the language core only
>(and don't take into account any non-essential run-time library
>components, such as containers or valarrays).

Then explain in one simple paragraph how C++ constructors and destructors work
(how they are invoked, what you have to do to make one "default", how you
prevent their use in parameter passing or as implicit casts, how you have to
invoke the parent's constructors from the constructor of a child, how to ensure
all destructors in a object's type hierarchy get called during delete, etc.)
This is all stuff that is pretty much required for basic C++ programming, and
its more arcane and exception-riddled than most English spelling rules.

If we throw out annex-based libraries as you suggest, Ada doesn't even *have*
constructors and destructors to talk about. :-)

Or we can compare the "cast system" of the two languages. Ada's rule is pretty
simple: the types have to be derived from each other, or predefined numeric
types. C++ on the other hand, has at least 3 different types of cast, plus an
old fashioned implicit one. To make things more interesting, constructor writers
can inadvertently create new implicit ones if they aren't careful...

I'm not saying all this extra stuff in C++ is *bad*. But there certianly is way
more of it.

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T.E.D.    homepage   - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html

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