Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada

[nelsoni@rintintin.Colorado.EDU (Ian S. Nelson)]

ramsesy@rd.scitec.com.au (Ramses Youhana) writes:

>David Weller (dweller@dfw.net) wrote:
>> In article <4g1bgf$l5@mailhub.scitec.com.au>,
>> Ramses Youhana <ramsesy@rd.scitec.com.au> wrote:
>> >Another thing not mentioned is that Ada is far more complicated to learn
>> >fully than is C/C++.  The complexity of the language can add to an increase
>> >in the probabilty of bugs being introduced and also adds to an increase in
>> >project maintanace costs.
>> >

>> Compared to C++?  You are wrong.  There are fewer features in C++, yet
>> the (draft) reference manual is larger than Ada 95 (not that this is
>> necessarily a good measure, but rather that a language that is less
>> complex would hopefully require less "langauge" to specify it).  My
>> personal experience with Ada 95 and C++ indicates the exact opposite
>> of your conclusion.  I have a feeling you haven't used Ada 95 very
>> much to make such claims.

>Sorry.  I had once heard that Ada was more complicated than C.  However, as
>many people have posted and told me otherwise, I take the comment back.

>However, I am interested in knowing what the advantages and disadvantages C/C++
>and Ada (or Ada 95) languages have over each other, without having to buy a
>book on Ada (as I am unlikely to use it in my profession), especially for
>engineering applications.

I'm not an Ada ninja or anything, I've done a fair bit of coding in it though.
I've done a heap of coding in C++, I've been hacking around with it since
around 1990.  I'll try to start it off though...  (and if you are an engineer
then there is a decent chance that you might end up using Ada, it depends on
who you work for though.)

These are all religious issues to a lot of people.  It is possible, IMO, to 
write good C++ and to write crappy Ada.

For imparitive programming and in general:
	*  C++ is not strong typed.  You can point a string to an integer
	   to a float and the most you'll usually get is a compiler warning.
	   C coders can use that ability to do neat things but in terms of 
	   language design, I think it is more desirable to only allow those
	   kinds of conversions if you mean it. Bad things can happen.
	*  C++ functions can be anywhere.  On more than one occasion I have
	   had to result to using "grep" on a large directory of files because
	   a programmer decided to just throw it in to a file for no obvious
	   reason.  Ada coaxs programmers to put things together a little more.
	*  Ada makes it more clear on what parameters for functions (procedures
	   and functions) do and what happens to them.  It is not uncommon to
	   send a pointer to a function in C++ even though the function doesn't
	   change anything.   
	*  Here is a good religious issue: C and C++ pick lousy names for the
	   standard library functions and classes.
	*  Ada is case insensitive.  C and C++ both care about the case you
	   use.
	*  There are stylistic differences.  I can't think of a good way to
	   describe them.  When you design a big C++ program you do it 
	   differently than you do with Ada.  Surely someone else can explain
	   this more.  C++ code is structured into files, Ada is in packages,
	   they are just different in some holistic way.
	*  C++ templates and exceptions are a pretty new standard for the
	   language, until recently the compiler vendor decided how to handle 
	   them.  They aren't really in wide use yet.
	*  C++ won't let you range types: a la "type year is an integer from
	   -2000 to 2050" or like that.  
	*  C++ enums are still typically just integers, is this changing?
	*  C and C++ have macros, I don't think ada has a feature like that.
	*  I'm not sure if this is a compiler feature or an Ada feature, but
	   Ada pays more attention to header files when compiling.  With C++
	   you can change one header file and it won't recompile your source
	   files unless you tell it to in your makefile.  I think Ada will 
	   notice those changes.
	*  There is probably a larger amount of C and C++ code open to the 
	   public that you can draw from.
	*  There are more C and C++ compilers.
	*  There are more C and C++ books.
	*  There is a certification process for Ada compilers, you take the
	   vendor's word for it in the C++ world.

	add more if you think they are relevent.  Please correct me if I messed
	something up, today has been an overly productive code day and I'm 
	drained.  

For objects:
	Now this section is much more religious, that's just the nature of 
	OOP...

	*  Ada doesn't have multiple inheritance, at least I don't think it
	   does.  This is subjective, there are ways around it and
	   many people think it is "dangerous."  I kind of like to have it as
	   an option though, if my object model demands that an object has to 
	   superclasses then I want it.  More importantly, if my boss gives me
	   an object model with a class that has two parents then I want it.
	*  It's my opinion that Ada is more likely to bark at you if you 
	   forget to include a method.  I've written code that has outputed
	   pointer addresses to the screen because I didn't supply a method
	   and then I just threw in a cast because it gave me a warning.
	*  Here is another really religious issue.  When I get really tired and
	   I'm doing C++, I resort to doing stupid tricks to make things 
	   compile (I hate leaving code broken overnight)  when I get a
	   compiler error I, in advertantly, do something stupid to "fix" it.
	   When I get a clean ada compile, I feel better about the code.  When
	   I get a clean C++ compile I question my test methodology.  You can
	   always force C++ to compile even if it does something really stupid.
	*  Ada seems tobe easier to do large projects in.  In C++, it has been
	   my experience that work gets divided up between coders by class.
	   (eg: Bob, you do the string class.  Bill, you do the LZW class.
	   Sarah, you do the tree class... etc.) 
	*  I think I like the emacs mode for ada more than the C++ mode that I
	   have.  
	
	surely there is a lot more to be said about this.  I'm starting to
	have a lot of trouble typing so I'm going to stop now.

Ian

>Ramses.