Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@cogeco.ca>]

Brian May wrote:
>>>>>>"Marc" == Marc A Criley <mcNOSPAM@mckae.com> writes:
>     Marc> Ada's enforcement of strong typing and runtime checks points
>     Marc> out when a programmer has made a mistake, whether as a
>     Marc> result of requirements, design, or coding error. (Of course
>     Marc> no one is suggesting that Ada would catch all requirements
>     Marc> or design errors--that's a ridiculous
>     Marc> mischaracterization--but when errant reqs or design lead to
>     Marc> a particular implementation, internal contradictions may
>     Marc> result in type conflicts or constraint errors.)
> 
> Ada has a lot of rules which you have to comply with when
> programming. I suspect some programmers find these rules obscure,
> weird and limiting[1]. These people prefer the freedom in other
> languages like Perl where there is infinity+1 ways of doing the same
> thing.
> 
> Personally, if I make a mistake, I want to find out sooner rather then
> later, and this requires good compiler time checking. Even if the
> program is not a mission critical program. Ada is the language I know
> with the highest level of checks at compile time.

Agree completely.

> There is the argument that languages like PHP are best for quick&dirty
> prototypes.  The counter argument is that these quick&dirty prototypes
> often evolve into the one complicated mess of code that everyone
> relies on.

This reminds me of Perl. I have always maintained that Perl
has its place, but not in "production".

> I can't understand the trend in the other direction towards languages
> like PHP, if you make a typo in a function name for instance, you
> won't realize until that like of code is executed, and even then you
> might miss the error message (for instance if it is not on screen).

Postscript is very much like this (nice language for what it
does). You write out your code and you execute it. Ie. you
go from writing the code straight into debugging. There is
not even a precompile step (like BASIC). And if your testing
doesn't cover all of the cases (path coverage), then surprises
lurk for you on some future black Monday.

I have to say that for most applications, I would rather
have as much static analysis done up front as possible. This
substantially reduces the need for testing for non-mission
critical things. With dynamic languages (like Postscript for
example), you need to test everything to have any confidence
at all in the code.
-- 
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg