On Thu, Oct 22, 1998 at 01:08:12PM -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > They were, however, not designed by committee, which is why much of > > the bulk of Ada is excess, useless, cumbersome baggage, and why much > > of the bulk of C++ and Java is actually useful. > > What do you call ANSI ? Aren't They a committee ? The ANSI committee > is in control of the C++ Std. Not Biojrn Strustrup (sp). I recognize the difference between design and standardization. I recognize that the original design is quite elegant and don't hold him responsible for what ANSI did to it (good or bad). In other words, I recognize that "design by committee" almost always leads to disaster, while "standardization by committee" is not quite as bad. It's not great, but it's not sure doom. > Well, the "validation" will help ensure that "Feature A" in 2 different > compilers will generate code that does the same thing. > I have seen 2 different "C" compilers generate massivly different code > (when doing assembly code debugging). So have I -- in fact, I've seen the *same* C compiler generate massively different code depending on what debugging/optimization options were supplied to it. But I don't see this as a problem needing to be solved; I don't really care if the code is different. What I *do* care about is whether or not it correctly performs its function. > > There's a reason you don't see the people who have a choice (i.e. the > > freeware community) rushing to port Ada and write things in Ada and create > > applications in it, while you *do* see them doing the same in C++ and > > Java (and C and Perl and tcl/tk). > > I guess that you have never heard of gnat (the GNU Ada Translator). I was aware that the GNU folks had a couple of bits and pieces of Ada-related code -- I didn't know the names of any of them. That hardly constitutes a "rush". In other words, if you look in any of the Usenet comp.sources.* archives, or monitor the releases of software announced in any of the net's mailing lists or web sites, you'll find that the lanaguages I listed above account for +95% of everything that comes out. Ada's presence is below insignificant, and it's pretty clear that the reason for that is that people who have a choice *don't* choose Ada. (Nor have they ever: even when all the hub-bub about Ada happened in the 80's, the people with a choice paid little attention to it.) Given that the 'net community has a long history of choosing the best tools they can get their hands on -- to the point of using alpha releases if that's all that's available -- why do you think that is? > Would you want to be riding in the space shuttle with 100 % new code that may > or (more realisticly) may NOT have been fully debugged ? I wouldn't want to ride in the space shuttle with new code *in any language*. There's nothing magic about Ada (or C++ or C or anything else) that makes it less likely to be buggy, despite the trumpeting of its endorsers. I've seen elegant code written in Fortran and garbled junk written in C++. What makes code less buggy, more maintainable, and all those other Good Things is the use of skilled programmers given adequate time to design, code and test their work -- the language is secondary to this effort, although obviously some are more suitable for certain tasks than others. (Example: natural language processing in Fortran would make your head explode.) ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec [EMAIL PROTECTED] ____________________________________________________________________ -------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Web Consultants Association : Register on our web site Now Web Consultants Web Site : http://just4u.com/webconsultants If you lose the instructions All subscription/unsubscribing can be done directly from our website for all our lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
