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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,304c86061dc69dba X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: f5d71,304c86061dc69dba X-Google-Attributes: gidf5d71,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,304c86061dc69dba X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-02-07 16:25:34 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn13feed!worldnet.att.net!bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Starner Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) User-Agent: Pan/0.14.2 (This is not a psychotic episode. It's a cleansing moment of clarity. (Debian GNU/Linux)) Message-Id: Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.java References: <20040206174017.7E84F4C4114@lovelace.ada-france.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 00:25:33 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.72.183.181 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 1076199933 12.72.183.181 (Sun, 08 Feb 2004 00:25:33 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2004 00:25:33 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:5326 comp.lang.c:21034 comp.lang.c++:18064 comp.lang.java:2759 Date: 2004-02-08T00:25:33+00:00 List-Id: On Sat, 07 Feb 2004 14:00:35 +0100, Ludovic Brenta wrote: > Of course, this is a lie, because programming is inherently > difficult and no language can make it easy. That's exactly what the assembly language programmers said about the first Fortran compiler, and it's equally wrong now. Sure, there are cases where you need to run DSP code and coordinate with the home base thirty million miles away using one space-hardened 386, and that's hard. Then there's the cases where you need two lines of shell to simplify moving files around, and that's something assembly or Fortran or Ada or Java would make much more complex then it is. > (like e.g. memory management. If some Java > "guru" reads this, ask yourself this one question: how many threads > does your program have, and please justify the existence of each > thread). In the Jargon file, there's a story of a man who bummed every cycle out of a poker program, even the initialization code, who spurned assembly language because it was too inefficient. How would you explain your choice of programming language to him? Who cares if there's a couple extra threads running? You make a big deal about languages that protect you against buffer overflows, why not use a language that protects you against memory leaks? > The "zen master" languages are Pascal, Modula, > Oberon, and, master of masters, Ada. Pascal is hardly usable, unless you use one of a dozen proprietary extensions. That's hardly "zen master".