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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Urgent question: malloc and ada...READ/NEW/FOLLOWUP
Date: 1998/04/18
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Date: 1998-04-18T00:00:00+00:00
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Joe says

<<Umm.  Here we go again.  No, not all developers have doctorates in
  anything, let alone computer science, but the problems of interfacing code
  written in different languages, or even same language but different
  compilers, have been with us for decades.  This is an area where details
  are excruciatingly important.>>

The idea that you need a doctorate in computer science to understand a
programming language like Ada is peculiar. I certainly have not found
this a necessity myself! In fact anyone with a reasonable practical
understanding of programming language semantics can perfectly well learn
Ada in general, and these aspects in particular. I talk by email nearly
every day to competent application programmers who have nothing like the
formal credentials that Joe seems to imagine as necessary. Many of them
understand these language aspects as well as I do. The idea that you
need special qualification to do this is definitely odd and does not
correspond to my experience at all.

<<I am perplexed.  Why do you think Ada, a capable but complex language, is
  any different?  Why do you express surprise that people have problems
  here, and demand the evidence, as if to prepare for a federal court case?>>

I don't know why you should be perplexed. Perhaps you simply don't know Ada 95
well enough to know that it is unique in being designed to interface with other
languages. For example, there is no other language of which I am aware which
has the capability of specifying that a particular type is to be represented
in a manner compatible with some other specific language.

It hardly needs a federal court case to be dissatisfied with your completely
unsubstantiated claim of difficulties in Ada 95 without a single example.
The reason an example is useful is we want to see whether it is genuinely
a gap or problem in Ada 95, or whether it is a matter of you not knowing
the language well enough (a possibility since you regard Ada as complex and
impossible to learn without a PhD in computer science :-)

<<Also, I don't know that having the enitire list in detail would help
  people, because they will have a different combination of languages and
  compilers.  What's more useful is the advice to focus on the interface
  details in your particular setup, because history has shown this area to
  be a rich source of trouble.>>

Absolutely, that is why the design of Ada 95 goes to such considerable
extents to provide specific features to solve these problems.

<<I have to wonder if I will ever be able to provide enough details to
  satisfy you.  Past history isn't encouraging.>>

I agree, it has been VERY hard to get you to discuss specific language
issues in the past. You have always been more comfortable at the general
"there are lots of problems, I know, I have been there" level. Fine, but
that deadends the conversation if we don't have a specific example. So
please contradict past history and cough up an example. Since you are now
trying to find the single example that most supports your case from a
supposedly long list, this should not be an unreasonable request!