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From: kim@wacsvax.cs.uwa.OZ.AU (Kim Shearer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Design/Development questions
Keywords: C, Ada, Lines of Code
Message-ID: <kim.644919981@wacsvax.cs.uwa.oz.au>
Date: 9 Jun 90 08:26:21 GMT
References: <677@tfsg.UUCP>
Organization: Computer Science,The University of Western Australia.
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In <677@tfsg.UUCP> dennis@tfsg.UUCP (Dennis Gibbs) writes:


><>

>I have a couple of hypothetical questions regarding C and Ada:

>1) If you have a software design, all things  being equal, if you implement
>   the design in both Ada and C, which implementation will have the highest
>   number of lines of code, the C implementation or the Ada implementation?
>   How much percentage-wise(more or less) on  average, would the difference
>   be?

>2) I remember  seeing various  studies that  show the length of time spent
>   developing software  systems from  the earliest design  stages to final
>   delivery.  Again, in a perfect world, would  it take more  or less time
>   to  design and develop in  Ada vs. C?  I am  excluding the maintenance/
>   enhancement phase in  this question.  If I recall I believe I have seen
>   studies somewhere that  show that  it takes  the same  amount  of  time
>   overall to design and develop in Ada vs. other languages, but that more
>   time is spent in design and less spent in coding for Ada.  Can  someone
>   direct me to any studies that investigate this issue?

>I do not wish to start  more C vs. Ada flame wars again, my purpose is  to
>start an informative, educational discussion on this subject....

>Dennis Gibbs
>...uunet!tfsg!dennis
>(703) 802-1961

 Question 1 is a little bit curly. If you are trying to do something
 low level or involving pointer manipulation .. then C will produce
 shorter code for sure. C will generally have less lines of code
 anyway. However there are times when Ada will produce less lines
 of code. The main point to note here is that Ada is generally 
 easier to read. Here I am talking about large ongoing projects
 where the same person does not always work on the same code.

 Question 2 is a godd one. Personally I work in C, as the code I
 write is for my consumption at a University. If I was doing
 a large scale commercial projects I would use Ada. I believe that 
 Ada gives you solid code, that will stand the test of time and
 generally waste less time on silly or obscure bugs. Ada is
 simple to read and write and provides a level of abstraction
 suited to most applications in the real world.

+--------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
Kim Shearer                      |     ARPA: kim%wacsvax.uwa.oz@uunet.uu.net
Dept. of Computer Science        |     UUCP: ..!uunet!munnari!wacsvax!kim
University of Western Australia  |     ACSnet: kim@wacsvax.uwa.oz       
CRAWLEY, Australia 6009          |     PHONE:  +61 9 380 3452 
+--------------------------------+--------------------------------------------+