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=-0.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,fe82bd3a72926e1a X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-10-16 08:30:54 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!look.ca!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news2.rdc2.tx.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Sender: minyard@wf-rch.cirr.com Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: "Size" of Ada vs. C++ is there )) References: <9q223u$lap2j$1@ID-77397.news.dfncis.de> <46vast4p1qnb0e8bt59v4e8616hacvcgtd@4ax.com> <3BC5C49F.B1386292@ao_spam_nix.de> <87ofn8a9dv.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> <87ofn8oypn.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> Reply-To: minyard@acm.org From: minyard@acm.org Message-ID: X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.7/Emacs 20.7 Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 15:30:53 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.7.109.109 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news2.rdc2.tx.home.com 1003246253 24.7.109.109 (Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:30:53 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 08:30:53 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:14695 Date: 2001-10-16T15:30:53+00:00 List-Id: Florian Weimer writes: > minyard@acm.org writes: > > >> > ..and compared to C++, Ada is fairly small. > >> > >> I'm not sure if this is true if you look at the language core only > >> (and don't take into account any non-essential run-time library > >> components, such as containers or valarrays). > > > > It's true, especially if you include the language core. > > > Things like: > > > > * Number of operators > > * Number of reserved words > > * Size of the specification (Note: This particular item is from vague > > memory, but I think it's right). > > 250 vs. 300 pages is not a huge margin. > > What about: > > * Number of different forms of type declarations > * Number of representation control mechanisms > * Elaboration issues > * Tasking semantics > > These language features are much more complex in Ada than in C++ > (simply because C++ hasn't got some of these features). > > In any case, I doubt that the "size" of the language tells us much > about the language itself. Perhaps there are additional factors > that indicate that the language is too big (for example, if no > complete implementations exist), but size is not a problem per se. > For example, I think most if not all Ada programmers appreciate the > elaboration semantics. They are rather complex, but without them, > very annoying problems would arise. I'm not arguing that point, the "size" of a language is quite meaningless, otherwise we would all be programming Turing machines :-). Someone was saying that Ada might not be smaller than C++, and I was giving some fuel for the debate. But, it's quite amazing to me that Ada can include all the tasking semantics, a full set of I/O libaries, all the fancy numeric types, annexes for real-time, systems programming, information systems, distributed systems, and safety and security, and still weigh in with a smaller and more usable specification than C++ and a simpler syntax. -Corey