Re: Ada / C++ comparison paper

[Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com>]

Ed Falis wrote:

> > Would be interesting to see what Joyner has to say about Ada.
> > If he knows anything about it, that is.
>
> I believe he has no particular opinion, since he's not familiar with it.
>   I think I remember him saying at one time that he'd be interested in
> knowing more.  In looking at the book version of the paper, I'd say he'd
> be critical of some aspects of the language, but more favorable than he
> is to C++ or Java.

I have sat with Ian on many occasions and chatted with him about Ada.
He does have a few things to say about it in the most recent version of his
book.   Ian is, as noted earlier, more favorably inclined toward Eiffel, so
he would not be an Ada advocate.   However, he is not as critical of Ada
as he is of C++.

He has noted, as have many others in the Eiffel community, that Ada has
much to recommend it.   They don't like what they see as the complexity
of having a package enclose the type/class,  the absence of assertions,
the need for much of the syntactical sugar,  the requirement for a private
part of a class/package, and lots of other little things that
Ada and C++ have in common.

As with many Eiffel advocates, Ian has expressed some surprise that Ada
does not have an assertion model.   I have never heard him express an
unfair opinion about Ada.   He is simply more interested in Eiffel.  He is
rather negative about C++, but that comes from his having used both
languages a lot and getting annoyed by the idiosyncrasies and suprises
that seem so common in developing with C++.  I think the ease of use and
lack of suprises that charcterize Eiffel are features (no pun intended)
that former C++ users like about programming in it.

Richard Riehle