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-Thread: 103376,21960280f1d61e84 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news2.google.com!news3.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsfeed00.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!130.59.10.21.MISMATCH!kanaga.switch.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!switch.ch!cernne03.cern.ch!not-for-mail From: Maciej Sobczak Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How come Ada isn't more popular? Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 10:23:39 +0100 Organization: CERN News Message-ID: References: <1169636785.504223.139630@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com> <45b8361a_5@news.bluewin.ch> <3pejpgfbki.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: abpc10883.cern.ch Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: cernne03.cern.ch 1170235419 22657 137.138.37.241 (31 Jan 2007 09:23:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@@cern.ch NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:23:39 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20061220) In-Reply-To: Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:8763 Date: 2007-01-31T10:23:39+01:00 List-Id: 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/