Re: Ada (was Rival JSF teams fly final STOVL flights with flair, highlight strengths)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <rbkb7.868$Pa.443446345@newssvr16.news.prodigy.com>, Ken Garlington
says...
>
>"Bob" <rfritz@home.com> wrote in message news:3B6A15C3.8B3A9277@home.com...
>: Today most DOD projects use C or C++. C++ is basically Ada with full
>: polymorphism (objects)and C syntax.
>
>This is just plain wrong.

Actually, wrong doesn't even begin to describe it. Ada supports both compile
time and runtime polymorphism (I assume that's what's meant by "full
polymorphism). C++ did indeed borrow some of Ada's ideas (eg: exceptions,
generics, line comments), but by no means all the important ones. For instance
it still does not sport any kind of native concurrency support, which is one of
Ada's big draws. C++ does have some of C's syntax but it has a lot of its own
too. C++ is a definite improvement over C, but its hardly a suitable substitue
for Ada.

I find the emphasis on C++ rather odd anyway. For the job I'm working on, the
argument was that FORTRAN would have been better used. The one before that, the
arguers wanted C. The one before that, they were switching from CMS-2. All of
these were post-mandate Ada jobs. I have yet to see a full-up C++ DoD job
(though I've no doubt some exist). The funny thing is that in each case, none of
the folks who wanted a different language were actually doing the work. People
who actually *use* Ada for a while tend to quickly see its benifits.

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