RE: Ada The Best Language?

["Beard, Frank" <beardf@spawar.navy.mil>]

I generally don't like getting into these discussions because it's
all irrelevant anyway.  The volume (or success) of C++ to Ada has
nothing to do with the relative quality/productivity/superiority
of Ada relative to C++.  It has to do with initial investment.
C (leading into C++) had a 10 or 15 year head start on Ada.  When
Ada came about, most of the C compilers were free, or near free, 
while the Ada compilers were very expensive.  When a manager looks
at initial costs (no matter how near-sighted that may be), and says

   "I can use a free, or near free, C compiler, or pay $20+ for an
   Ada compiler.  Let's see which way to go?"

Even with the Ada mandate, there were plenty of groups violating it,
mostly due to cost.  Even when we moved to the PC arena back in 1989,
the Alsys compiler was $5K, while Turbo C was $59.  Even after the big
Alsys price cut, it was still $2500 per copy.  So, the low cost of C
lead to wide use from the home hacker to company software teams, which
led to lots of libraries for just about everything under the sun.
Granted the initial cost argument has not been true for a number
of years now, but it doesn't negate the head start enjoyed by C/C++.

Fortunately, I worked for managers that were not so near-sighted and
chose Ada, but I was around plenty that went the other way.

While I agree with McDoobie that different languages have their
strong points and are better in different situations, the question
"what language is the best" translates, in my mind, to "what is
the best general purpose language".  To me that is Ada (though I
haven't used Eiffel and have only looked at Java).  Not just from
what I've read, but what I've experienced as well.  I've moved 
from VAX VMS to LynxOS to IBM MVS back to HP-UX to Windows, with
very little change to code.

Similar C/C++ ports were nightmares.  Anything that had to do
with shared memory (global sections on VAX), threads/processes,
interprocess communication, semaphores, etc., were extremely
painful to port in C/C++.  All of which were nicely taken care of
by highly portable tasks in Ada.  Fortunately, I didn't have to do
an of the C/C++ ports.

Of course Ada can't be the best for all situations (at least not yet),
but if it's good enough to do the job well, then I don't care to
learn the "better" language for that isolated advantage.  I admire 
McDoobie and others who can work in multiple languages fluently.
My mind just doesn't work well that way.  I prefer to choose what
I think is the best overall and go with it, until something forces
me to use another.  I've done Assembly (VAX), Fortran, Pascal,
C/C++, and Ada.  I've seen a number of studies over the years that
showed Ada superiority to C/C++ in readability, error detection,
reliability, SLOC reduction, maintainability, etc. But I'm not even
going to bother trying to look them up, because it didn't make a
difference the first time, and it won't make a difference now.

With the huge amount of libraries and interfaces defined for C/C++
(and Java), most C/C++ programmers wouldn't consider switching to
Ada unless it had at least the same amount, and probably not even
then, despite the technical advantages of Ada.  Ada has to at least
catch up, and be able to adapt to new hardware and interfaces as
fast as C/C++.  Plus we need innovation that will put Ada in the
lead instead of playing catch up.  I just wish I knew how to do
it.

Frank

-----Original Message-----
From: codesavvy@aol.com [mailto:codesavvy@aol.com]

> No but do you have any data that measures how much more productive an
> Ada developer is using these features?  BTW I like these features in
> Ada 95 a lot.  I doubt, however, that producitivity is increased
> significantly by having them available.