Re: advantages or disadvantages of ADA over pascal or modula

[Adrian Knoth <adi@drcomp.erfurt.thur.de>]

karl bowl <karl.bowl@gmx.de> wrote:

> I would like to ask anybody to tell me about advantages or disadvantages of
> ADA(95) over pascal or modula(2).

Pascal is mainly for learning purpose. Modula-(3) is a successor of
Pascal, so the properties are similar.

Ada95 (watch the spelling) looks like a Pascal-alike language but is
not the 7th million ugly language from N. Wirth :)

Ada is one of the clearest, most consequent languages at all, it
focusses on readability, portability and security. The last fact
is important. By detecting the maximum of errors at compile-time
running the program is improved right from the beginning. And even
at runtime, a lot of checks guarantee you the right result of
operations, so limiting the amount of surprises.

There was an article about Ada and an Australian satellite some weeks
ago, you should read it. It clearly states why Ada was used, because
there is no possibility to reset the computer in space.

And a common joke in language-discussion is that C++-programmers should
go on debugging while the Ada-programmers have spare time. This is because
if Ada-code compiles it is less buggy than other.

I've done all, Pascal, Ada and Modula. You have a lot limitations in
Pascal. You have identical limitations in Modula, but Modula is better
in some cases than Pascal. At least, the PM3-compiler is bad. I've
found two serious bugs in the P-Modula3-compiler within the first two weeks
of use and several other bugs afterwards. There are even errors in the
documentation, the runtime-environment and, worst, in the implementation
of the language definition.

Ada has a widely discussed language definition and compilers are forced
to it in order to call itself an Ada-compiler. There are some features
that are COULDs, that's for sure.

With Ada95 you have the power of a well-designed modern language with
(parallel-)tasking-capabilities, OOP, security and so on. I guess you
won't miss anything if you're used to Pascal-alike languages.

P.S.: By posting with gmx.de, do you know toh?

-- 
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