Re: Teaching C/C++ from Ada perspective?

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> (My own résumé reads like:  wrote libraries to back-fill all the major gaps in C++ at this employer, and oh did much the same a little differently at that employer, and yet again at the next employer but this time extended from a prior open-source basis.)

You have picked the wrong argument. The proliferation of libraries in C++ comes from the fact that the standard library is relatively (compared to fully baked platforms like .NET) small and omits many important areas. The problem with your argument is that in Ada it is not any better and since the usual way to solve the problem in Ada is to write bindings to libraries written in C or C++, you just have additional layer of mess (or additional dimension). More versions to care about, more bugs to fix/rely on, more incompatible APIs that prevent you from merging or reusing code, etc.

A very good example of this mess is GUI, where in C++ you have a mess of multiple libraries, but in Ada you have a 2D mess of multiple bindings to those. And there is no sign of this getting any better in any foreseeable future.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com