Re: Alternatives to C: ObjectPascal, Eiffel, Ada or Modula-3?

["BGB / cr88192" <cr88192@hotmail.com>]

"Andrea Taverna" <a.tavs.NOSPAM@libero.it.invalid> wrote in message 
news:h3sln0$rhm$2@news.eternal-september.org...
> Hi folks!
>
> I'm a CS student and I often need to write number-crunching code dealing 
> with combinatorial optimization problems.
> What I do usually is implementing ad-hoc algorithms and testing their 
> performance against other previously-known solutions, including general 
> solvers.
>
> In the past I used C, but now I have decided to change language.
> I'm looking for a "better" one.
>

("better" is debatable... some define it in terms of more subjective 
aspects, and others are more pragmatic about the matter...).


> Here follow the features it should have, ranked approximately by 
> relevance:
>
> 0) open-source support and an alive community
> 1) directly compiled to efficient code
> 2) statically typed and object-oriented, better if multi-paradigm
> 3) general-purpose libraries (possibly standardized, either by standard or 
> de facto), including containers and some math abstractions.
> 4) garbage collected. As an alternative, provide memory management 
> policies via libraries (e.g. memory pools and such)
> 5) optional run-time checks and some kind of control over compilation and 
> low-level issues
> 6) "relatively simple and consistent"
>
> So I have considered these alternatives: FreePascal, Eiffel, Ada and 
> Modula-3.
> I have taken a look at all of them and I'm still undecided. Below are the 
> impressions I got for each language.
> Can you help me? Feel free to recommend other languages as well.
>

although I don't personally use it (for varried and numerous reasons), have 
you considered Java?...

afaik, modern Java involves a fair amount of JIT-time optimization, and so 
for carefully written code can be performance-competative with C and C++...

it is a similar situation with C#.

(the big cost in my case, however, is not performance, but that they depend 
on these particular VMs...).


for my uses though, I typically use C and C++ (and ASM...). these languages 
are just best suited for what I do with them.


of those listed, FreePascal and Ada seem like ok bets.

the main cost is that they have far smaller development communities than C 
and Java and like, and like I have seen with many smaller languages, the 
developer communities often tend to have a kind of fanatical zeal... (in 
place of a more pragmatic outlook...).

Delphi may be worth looking into, given it is similar to FreePascal, and has 
(AFAIK) a larger developer base.


> TIA
>    --> Impressions I got for each language
>
>     - FreePascal is a safe and modular alternative to C and C++,  but it 
> is also close to the latter in terms of expressiveness. Moreover it 
> doesn't seem to have the libraries I need.
> ==>Qualifies for 0,1,2,5. Not sure about 3 and 4
>
>     - Eiffel is geared toward application programming in 
> medium/large-sized teams relying heavily on OO modelling. It is designed 
> for (re)usability, correctness and efficiency in this order.  My needs are 
> somewhat different though.
> The main gripe I have with Eiffel is the lack of a well-documented 
> standard gpl'ed library.
> GOBO and EiffelBase seem to have incomplete or non-free documentation and 
> I couldn't find tutorials; as such, I couldn't get a clear picture about 
> them.
> ==> Qualifies for 0,1,2,4,5 and 6.  Not sure about 3.
>
>     - Ada is best suited for large teams and/or critical software, thus it 
> may be overkill for my work, OTH it could have anything I might happen to 
> need.
> What holds me from jumping onto Ada is the potential complexity
> It would be interesting  to hear the experience of other people learning 
> Ada from the C/Java background.
> As for memory management (requirement 4), I heard there are different 
> takes on the matter:
> (a) Ada uses dynamic stack allocation a lot, and in a transparent way, 
> reducing the need of manual management (MM)
> (b) Ada libraries adopt idioms that further simplifies MM issues
> (c) Conservative garbage collectors such as Bohem's can be used with Ada, 
> and they are supposed to work "better" with Ada than with unsafe languages 
> such as C and C++
>
> So can MM be said to be easier in Ada than in C? I hope Ada-ers will 
> mercifully shed some light on the issue.
>

conservative GC typically works plenty well in C, at least as long as people 
refrain from esoteric trickery ("oh I can't xor pointers or store them in a 
file, thus GC is useless", ...).

granted, conservative GC does work better in single-threaded C and C++ than 
in multithreaded code...


> There seems to be a lot of Ada95 free documentation on the net, I guess 
> it's suitable for Ada05 as well.
> ==> Qualifies for 0,1,2,3,5 and, partially, 4
>
>     - Modula-3 is simpler/smaller than Ada and has been successfully used 
> for system/application programming.
> It seems to be the most consistent, simple and easy to grok, but I 
> couldn't find any container/math library ready to use.
> ==> Qualifies for 0,1,2,4,5,6.