Re: Ada & MacOS

[Maciej Sobczak <no.spam@no.spam.com>]

Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:

> Interesting that you mention Mozilla. Take a look at their rules for 
> writing C++ for the project:
> 
> http://www.mozilla.org/hacking/portable-cpp.html
> 
> Lots of things you can't use

That's interesting, especially taking into account that all of the 
platforms for which they provide downloadable binaries can be targeted 
with just two or three recent versions of GCC. Plus VC++ for Windows.
All of these compilers support the forbidden features. I cannot comment 
on these rules, because I don't really know when they were last updated 
and what is the actual list of compilers that they use.

It might be also good to point out one thing - different projects (or 
even application areas) impose different guidelines and restrictions on 
the set of allowed language features, even without taking the 
portability under consideration, sometimes just to retain some given 
style or control over the design - when the language is powerful enough, 
it might turn out to be too powerful. Such guidelines and restrictions 
are in use *also* with Ada - Ravenscar is a good example - but nobody 
will claim here that Ada is a bad language. In general, the fact that 
some project (company, application area, etc.) uses any given set of 
restrictions does not indicate that the language is broken.


>> BTW - why do you write "C++" in question marks, and Ada without them?
> 
> C++ is an ISO standard; anything that isn't the language defined in that 
> standard isn't C++. Lots of people use the name "C++" to refer to things 
> that aren't C++; I use "C++" to refer to such things.

OK, I see. I understand then, that the code which is fully 
standard-compliant can be called C++ even if it's compiled with the 
compiler that does not support 100% of the standard? I call my code C++ 
then.

> By the way, '"' is a quotation mark; '?' is a question mark.

Sure. Mindless typo. :)


-- 
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/