Re: How come Ada isn't more popular?

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

Markus E Leypold wrote:

>> Sorry, but that's a misconception - I don't remember when I was the
>> last time I was messing with manual memory management in a regular C++
>> code. I estimate that in my current programming I call delete (or free
>> or whatever) once in 5-10 kLOC.
> 
> OK. I'll have to reconsider this statement. I usually couldn't trim
> down 'automatic' allocation to that extent, but that might have been
> my application area. What I remember though, is the difficulty to
> recover from exceptions in the presence of automatic (scope bound)
> memory management. (I hope I'm making sense here, else I'd really have
> to go back to my C++ mind and notes and try to retrieve the right
> vocabulary and reasoning and -- well -- I don't really want to have a
> C++ discussion in c.l.a. :-).

Why not having C++ discussions on the list where people claim that C++ 
sucks? :-)

> If we must, let's shift that to personal
> mail or to another group ...).

Yes, please feel free to contact me with regard to the above (follow the 
links in my signature).

> But from what I remember in
> the 1997s to 1998s

Most programming languages were terrible at that time, that's true.

> (that was when there still were problems with STLs,
> exceptions and the string libraries in C++ and when there was no
> standard and Java was new), that this was one of the motivations that
> people shifted to Java (either from C++ or from C).

Yes, I know that. And I will keep stating that this motivation resulted 
from common misconceptions, further amplified by Java marketing.
I've even heard that Java is better, because it has a String class and 
there is no need to use char* as in C++ (!). FUD can buy a lot.

> The other
> motivation was the "portable GUI"

Yes.

> which, I think, mostly disappointed
> the expectations.

Still, GUI that sucks was better than no standard GUI at all for lost of 
  people. Both C++ and Ada are in the same camp in this aspect. I'm not 
claiming that these languages should have standard GUI, but not having 
it definitely scared many.

> Of course I might be wrong. This is just teh impression I got "from
> the trenches" and I might be missing a mor global point of view. It
> perhaps does not apply today where C++

Well, there is still no standard GUI for C++, but the choice with 
non-standard ones is quite impressive:

http://www.free-soft.org/guitool/

> and the understanding of C++
> has matured a bit

Yes. Sadly, too late for those who already changed their mind.

> (there is even an embedded subset of C++ which will
> annoy folks here no end :-).

I think that at the end of the day the embedded C++ will disappear from 
the market as the "full" C++ gets wider compiler support on embedded 
platforms. There will simply be no motivation for using subsets.
Subsetting C++ would be beneficial in the sense similar to Ravenscar or 
by extracting some core and using it with formal methods (sort of 
"SPARK++"), but I doubt it will ever happen.

>>> The trend I see, is that GC is a must, clumsy pointer handling is out
>>> and types are an option for those that can understand them.
>> Indeed, looks like everybody is going in that direction.
> 
> And certainly. Why should advances in hardware only buy more spiffy
> GUIs and not something to ease the everyday pain for the everyday
> software developer :-).

The interesting thing is that memory management is *said* to be painful. 
C++ and Ada are similar in this regard - the majority of the regular 
code don't need manual memory management (local objects!) or can have it 
encapsulated (containers!), so there are no problems that would need to 
be solved. Reference-oriented languages have completely different ratio 
of "new per kLOC" so GC is not a feature there, it's a must. But then 
the question is not whether GC is better, but whether reference-oriented 
languages are better than value-oriented ones. Many people get seduced 
by GC before they even start asking such questions.

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