Re: Is the Writing on the Wall for Ada?

["John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>]

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic.brenta@skynet.be> wrote in message
news:m3brtwobby.fsf@insalien.org...
[snip]
> By contrast, Ada was designed by and for Real Programmers, and with
> low development costs as the main requirement, therefore it took the
> exact opposite approach; it had generics before inheritance,
> emphasises separation of interfaces from implementation for code
> reuse, and tries its best to detect errors as early as possible at
> compile time.  Ada is an engineer's dream and a vendor's nightmare.

One quibble.

Ada was not designed for low DEVELOPMENT costs.

Ada was designed for low SOFTWARE LIFECYCLE costs.

The key difference is that NET cost reduction over the entire software
lifecycle MAY require swallowing higher INITIAL costs.

As an extreme example: You can push just about anything through a C
compiler, and the compiler will swallow it and be happy.  Later, the system
will blow bits out the side of the box.  On the other hand, it can take a
lot more effort to get the Ada compiler to accept the equivalent program,
but MANY, MANY Ada programmers have learned, one at a time the old-fashioned
way, that, once you get the Ada compiler to swallow your source code and not
spit it back up, your code is ALMOST certain to work exactly the way you
want it to.

So you have traded increased compilation costs for decreased debugging,
test, and integration costs.  Since debugging, test, and integration
typically costs a LOT more than running the compiler, this is typically a
net win.