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From: ketil@ii.uib.no (Ketil Z Malde)
Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
Date: 1996/02/20
Message-ID: <eg3f85zq6j.fsf@trost.ii.uib.no>#1/1
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sender: ketil@trost.ii.uib.no
references: <00001a73+00002504@msn.com> <3114d8fb.5a455349@zesi.ruhr.de>
organization: II, UiB
reply-to: ketil@ii.uib.no
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1996-02-20T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Since, as you say, these issues are religious, here's a little
gospelling -- hope I don't miss the mark entirely:

Ian said:

For imparitive programming and in general:
	*  C++ is not strong typed.  You can point a string to an integer
	   to a float and the most you'll usually get is a compiler warning.

Don't you need a cast to do this?!?

	*  C++ functions can be anywhere.  On more than one occasion I have
	   had to result to using "grep" on a large directory of files because
	   a programmer decided to just throw it in to a file for no obvious
	   reason.

This is, of course true.  Use [ce]tags, or some other scheme to
navigate your source code.

	*  Ada makes it more clear on what parameters for functions (procedures
	   and functions) do and what happens to them.  It is not uncommon to
	   send a pointer to a function in C++ even though the function doesn't
	   change anything.

..which is why you declare it as "const" (even though I know you can
probably still fool it)

	*  Here is a good religious issue: C and C++ pick lousy names for the
	   standard library functions and classes.

Whatever.

	*  Ada is case insensitive.  C and C++ both care about the case you
	   use.

I care, too, so that suits me fine.  Matter of taste?

	*  There are stylistic differences. [...]
	*  C++ templates and exceptions are a pretty new standard for the
	   language, until recently the compiler vendor decided how to handle 
	   them.  They aren't really in wide use yet.

Hmm...I think templates are coming along nicely, at least the STL
seems to gain some foothold, don't you think?  Any compilers *still*
not supporting templates?  I doubt it.

	*  C++ won't let you range types: a la "type year is an integer from
	   -2000 to 2050" or like that.

But you can easily write one yourself, and make your own choices when
there's a tradeoff between flexibility and performance.

	*  C++ enums are still typically just integers, is this
           changing?

I believe so -- though don't bet on it.

	*  C and C++ have macros, I don't think ada has a feature like
           that.

I thought macros were bad?  Anyway, I think cpp adds some nice
features every now and again.

[...]

	*  I think I like the emacs mode for ada more than the C++ mode that I
	   have.  
	
I do wish cc-mode would support highlighting template definitions as
well, yes.

-kzm