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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 109fba,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: 115aec,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Thread: f43e6,703c4f68db81387d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,gid109fba,gid115aec,gidf43e6,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!news.glorb.com!atl-c03.usenetserver.com!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.realtime,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada) References: <4229bad9$0$1019$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au> <1110032222.447846.167060@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <871xau9nlh.fsf@insalien.org> <3SjWd.103128$Vf.3969241@news000.worldonline.dk> <87r7iu85lf.fsf@insalien.org> <87is4598pm.fsf@insalien.org> <1110054476.533590@athnrd02> <1110059861.560004@athnrd02> <87wtsl7jts.fsf@insalien.org> <1110264816.858853.54020@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com> <1110273670.682581@athnrd02> <1110295787.614050.193480@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> In-Reply-To: <1110295787.614050.193480@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 12:54:49 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.23.136 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net 1110372889 209.165.23.136 (Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:54:49 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:54:49 PST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:8927 comp.lang.c++:44756 comp.realtime:1119 comp.software-eng:4678 Date: 2005-03-09T12:54:49+00:00 List-Id: Ada is not all about safety - although that is a factor in its design. Some of it is intended to help one organize one's thoughts about the programming problem and encourage abstraction. If one thinks in terms of zeros and ones instead of higher level abstractions (such as enumerations or numerical types associated with the thing they are counting, etc.) one might find themselves "fighting the compiler". While Ada is perfectly good at getting down to the bits and bytes and in some ways better than C++ - (can C++ provide representation clauses on data structures to control exactly how bits are packed and ordered?) a lot of Ada is aimed at abstracting you away from the zeros and ones, Partly for portability across platforms but mostly to encourage you to think about the problem differently. When programming in Ada, you can't think "C++" and try to do exactly what you do in C++ only in Ada syntax. The same would be true in the other direction. You have to work with the language rather than try to fight what it is. Doing so, you'll likely realize the benefits intended by the designers of the language. MDC Jerry Coffin wrote: > > The first problem is to define what you mean by safety. Bjarne has been > fairly explicit that most safety features in C++ are intended to > prevent accidents, not intentional subversion. It's always seemed to me > that Ada has had a rather muddled idea of the "threat model", so the > language features have never been entirely aligned to a single intent. > Some parts appear intended to prevent accidents, but are quite easy to > subvert when one wishes to do so. Other parts appear to have been > designed with the intent of preventing even intentional subversion, but > fail to do so, and simply render some things quite a bit uglier than > there seems to be good reason for. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "'Shut up,' he explained." -- Ring Lardner ======================================================================