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From: nasser@apldbio.com (Nasser Abbasi)
Subject: Re: C is 'better' than Ada because...
Date: 1996/06/23
Message-ID: <nhk9wzovx7.fsf@paralysys>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 161662558
sender: news@biosys.apldbio.COM
references: <4q8fbo$701@red.interact.net.au>
original-sender: nasser@apldbio.com
followup-to: comp.lang.c
organization: Applied BioSystems
newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-06-23T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>



   From: jont@t-cubed.demon.co.uk (Jon Taylor)

   I have programmed in both C and Ada for a number of years, and your
   article is misleading in many respects.  You can write bad code in 
   Ada just as easily as bad code in C.   I worked on the
   primary flight computer for the 777 project, and the software was
   a mess - and it was written in Ada.

   Sure, C lets you do silly things and doesn't pick up on things
   like array bounds and overflows, but you can get similar problems
   in any language.  Your examples were unfair, in that you picked
   a horrendous C example, but picked a sensible Ada comparison.

   I suspect the reasons Ada is not more popular than it rightly
   deserves are (amongst others) :-

   a) There is a large body of skilled C programmers, who would
      rather keep their skills in that language.  Better the devil
      you know.

   b) Validated Ada compilers are not cheap.  Using gnat is just not
      good enought for a commercial system.

   c) There is no perceived benefit to making the change to Ada. 

   Even the DoD no longer mandates the use of Ada for defence projects.
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is this really true? The DoD policy changed on Ada? when did this happen?


nasser
-- 
Nasser Abbasi. C/C++/Ada Solaris. GeneAssist - A client/server application 
for Nucleic acid and protein sequence search and analysis. 
PE-Applied BioSystem division. email:  nasser@apldbio.com   
MSEE(control), MSCS, MSCE, FM(Fide Chess Master 2305 ELO  1.e4 !!)