From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII X-Google-Thread: 103376,b30bd69fa8f63cb2 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-06-11 02:41:43 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: kanze@gabi-soft.fr Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: C bug of the day Date: 11 Jun 2003 02:41:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: References: <1054751321.434656@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> <82347202.0306101232.16776a81@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 62.160.54.162 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1055324503 4756 127.0.0.1 (11 Jun 2003 09:41:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 11 Jun 2003 09:41:43 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:38960 Date: 2003-06-11T09:41:43+00:00 List-Id: Wesley Groleau wrote in message news:... > >>>> I'd rather have a language in which all of the defaults were > >>>>fundamentally safe, but with the freedom to override them if you > >>>>had special constraints, or even in cases where you came across a > >>>>case which the language authors hadn't considered. I don't know > >>>>such a language, however; it may exist somewhere, but if it does, > >>>>it certainly isn't very popular or wide spread. > > This is even more disappointing coming from the author (James > > Kanze). I have had email conversations with him about Ada. He has > > heard of Ada. He has never used Ada. He does not understand what he > > has been told. > Sounds to me like he knows he's describing Ada and pretending he > doesn't. Just to set the record straight, I hadn't seen the cross posting, and wasn't thinking of Ada at all. There are a number of languages whose developers have placed safe use as a very high criteria. Some of them also allow unsafe practices when possible. From what I've read, Modula-3 is my favorite of these, but Ada is certainly among them (and even Modula-3 has one or two things I don't like). While I very much like these languages in theory, I've never had the occasion to actually use them in a real application. So I tend to forget about them. There are also languages which correct one or two weaknesses of C++, but also throw out all of its good points, and make work-arounds impossible in the cases which they got wrong (which are still a lot). The results are that even though such languages claim great safety, and do tend to core dump less often in the hands of a na�ve programmer (but is a wrong result better than a core dump?), it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a careful and conscientious programmer to write code to the level of quality that I usually insist on. Never the less, some of these languages have received a great deal of publicity because of their supposed safety. I was mainly thinking of this latter group when I wrote my statement. While I'll stand by my statement that no language is perfect, with regards to Ada, I'll admit my ignorance, and say that from what I've read of the language, I'm very favorably impressed. > Could it be a subtle form of trolling ? Not intentionally, at any rate. -- James Kanze GABI Software mailto:kanze@gabi-soft.fr Conseils en informatique orient�e objet/ Beratung in objektorientierter Datenverarbeitung 11 rue de Rambouillet, 78460 Chevreuse, France, T�l. : +33 (0)1 30 23 45 16