Re: Ada and C++: A request for comparison/contrast/relative benefits

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In article <16C2AEC77.C558172@mizzou1.missouri.edu>, C558172@mizzou1.missouri.e
du writes:
*In article <26292@alice.att.com>
*bs@alice.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup) writes:
* 
*>
*>On top of that, that common thread takes a problem with C and counts it as
*>a fatal flaw in C++.
*>
*>What catastrophic software induced failures, such as plane crashes and
*>telephone breakdowns, tells us is that no language is 100% safe and that
*>we can't rely 100% on any part of a system. the reliability of a system
*>depends on every part and ascribing an error to a particular part of the
*>total system is simply pin-pointing the error. The real responsibility
*>for the integrity of the system is in the people who produce the system
*>and not in any one part of the system.
*>
*>Should this argument be taken to mean that safety of language constructs
*>is irrellevant? Not at all; we want to have our languages as safe as is
*>reasonable. Exactly as we want every other component in the system as
*>safe and reliable as is reasonable. However, we can decide where in the
*>system to spend our limited resources. Focussing exclusively on the
*>programming language - or any other individual part of the system -
*>is absurd.
*>
*>Blaming a programming language for a specific systems failure, even a purely
*>software one is confusing the issue. We can make mistakes in any language.
*>We can write bad code in any language. We try not to and we try to choose
*>our languages with that in mind.
*>
*>        - Bjarne
*>
*While blaming the programming language for a _single_ specific system failure
*is not going to tell you if the language constructs are safe; a pattern of
*failures is a good indication of improper language design. 


That's what the outside world has been saying all along.  You take STANFINS R,
the FAA scandal,  all of the grief from the Adawoe BBS, all of the grief
which I've seen in journal articles for the last ten years every time anybody
tries to do anything at all non-trivial with Ada, all of the stories about
people spending ten hours working around Ada and one hour solving their
problem, Charles Hoare's warning not to use Ada for anything with potentially
serious consequences (speech upon receipt of Turing award, 1980), Jean
Ichbiah's washing his hands of the 9X effort, which is like imagining the
inventor and chief design engineer of the Edsel publically denouncing the
next-year's new-and-improved model, all of the stories about people writing
some little menu in Ada (to claim they'd used it) and then branching to
code in other languages (which works), thus guaranteeing non-portability...

There's a real easy solution:  just get rid of it.  Join the free world,
try living like reasonable people for a change.




-- 
Ted Holden      Evolutionism is to science
HTE             As rapp is to music