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From: mheaney@ni.net (Matthew Heaney)
Subject: Re: Eiffel and Java
Date: 1996/10/28
Message-ID: <mheaney-ya023180002810962151220001@news.ni.net>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 192846299
references: <550sm2$sn1@buggy.news.easynet.net>
content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
organization: Estormza Software
mime-version: 1.0
newsgroups: comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1996-10-28T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <550sm2$sn1@buggy.news.easynet.net>, Sacha@easynet.fr (Vincent
WEBER) wrote:

>  By the way, one more thing : I just had a look at ADA 95 and it's "OO"
model. 
>Even if I admit it is powerful, I think it's very heavy. (The ADA 9X group had 
>to keep all the Ada 93 stuff...:)). However, one thing interested me : Ada 
>fanatics claim that the dot notation break the symetry of natural operation, 
>and that Ada's model of dynamic bindings in all the parameters of a procedure 
>is better (that is, writing for instance Add(VectorA, VectorB) instead of 
>VectorA.Plus(VectorB). I don't know what to think about this controversy. Any 
>idea ?

I guess I would qualify as one of those "Ada fanatics." ;-)

What do you mean by "heavy," exactly?  The entire language, or just the
object-oriented features?  You state that we had keep all the Ada 83
features, but what's your issue with that?  

You don't seem to mind putting threads in Eiffel, so the Ada tasking
mechanism can't be it.

Ada's type mechanism accomplishes the equivalent of pre- and
post-conditions, and you don't seem to mind their inclusion in Eiffel, so
that can't be it.

You seem to like generics, so that can't be it.

You seem to like Java's package mechanism, so it's inclusion in Ada can't be it.

What is so heavy, then?

About subprogram calls.  C++ or Eiffel programmers call objects this way:

   theStack.push (5);

and Ada programmers do this

   Push (5, On => The_Stack);

It's not a moral issue which way is better, just a difference in syntax. 
They both do the same thing.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Heaney
Software Development Consultant
mheaney@ni.net
(818) 985-1271