Re: Ada

[billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 )]

From ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden):
>>   Total rubbish; C++ retains all the low-level and dangerous
>>   facilities of C, which is obsolescent by modern software
>>   engineering standards.  As stated by Fairley (Software
>  
> Those features are there because they are necessary for real world
> programming. 

   Would you care to try to prove this, for the benefit of 
   those of us who could really use a few good laughs?  (But
   do us a favor and read a few SOFTWARE ENGINEERING texts
   before you try, so we won't have to waste too much effort
   giving you references...)

>>> There is no real way to call [Ada] from a Cobol program.
>  
>>   Ada users can call COBOL or any other language using pragma
>>   INTERFACE; COBOL needs to have a similar standardized means
>>   of calling other languages.  Given that it does not, ad hoc
>>   means of calling other languages have been devised; there is
>>   no reason why such techniques cannot be used to call Ada just
>>   as well as C or any other language.  But this is COBOL's problem,
>>   not Ada's.
>  
> Dead wrong.  This is a grey area, but Ada tasking basically requires
> that the starting point be an Ada program i.e. predictable results/full
> Ada functionality are not possible from an Ada module called from a
> routine written in another language.  The requirements to link
> low-level kinds of routines into Cobol programs are very real.  Every
> Ada manual I've seen says that results from such code are unpredictable.

   Is this the Ada Reference Manual (and thus pertaining to Ada),
   or specific manuals for specific compilers?  If the latter, then
   this may be a property of particular compilers, but is NOT an
   inherent property of Ada.  Thus, it becomes the user's responsibility
   to find a vendor which will provide a compiler which will satisfy the
   user's requirements relative to SOME OTHER LANGUAGE in addition to 
   the requirements of the Ada LRM.  
 
> First, the problem with performance didn't involve UNIX.  Second, to my
> knowledge, the vender only offers the one version for the machine.
> Again, the customer was not John Rockafeller.

   Oh, I see.  It is somehow Ada's fault that compilers are not available
   for pennies (if that) which will do everything imaginable on all possible
   machines, particularly when management failed to do a good job of compiler
   evaluation before starting the project and now needs to find a better 
   compiler than the one MANAGEMENT selected in order to save the project. 

   C'mon, Ted, admit it!!!  You're trying to blame Ada for everything
   under the sun, REGARDLESS of whose fault it really was.  Get a life... 
 
> The obvious implication is that these other machines, which are quite
> powerful, yet lack the capability for serious Ada development.  Why is
> that?  IBM, DEC, and Sun computers can easily be used to develope
> software in C, Fortran, Pascal, C++, Cobol...
   
   And Ada.  Rational offers a very powerful CASE environment which
   far surpasses anything being used by the C, Fortran, Pascal, etc.
   crowd.  One major reason for this is that users of those languages
   generally operate as programmers, whereas Ada users generally operate
   as software engineers.  This results in Ada users having much higher
   standards, both for their language and for their CASE environments.

   Competition is arising for Rational in the form of the TeleArcs
   CASE environment for the Suns and VAXen; given Telesoft's association
   with IBM, it will probably soon be available there as well.  And of
   course there are other vendors playing the game as well.  So although
   Ada software has long been developed on all of the above platforms
   without advanced CASE environments, that era is quickly departing.
 
% Aside from myself, who is saying that the end is near for Ada?
% Possibly, a certain Mr. Gorbachov in the CCCP, who is basically
% declaring the cold war to be over, and a Mr. Cheney in Washington D.C.
% who is talking about cutting 180 Billion from the U.S. defense budget
% over the next five years (Wash. Post, A1, Nov 18, 89).  Anybody care to
% bet that Ada doesn't become one of the first casualties of all this?

   Yep.

% The last figures I've read indicated that 65 percent of all
% software development in this world was being done in C, and the next
% highest figure for any other language was around six percent.  Are
% Borland, MicroSoft, Lotus, Ashton-Tate, WordPerfect, and all of
% those companies just that stupid?

   Considering the number of articles I've read recently in the 
   Wall Street Journal about the software crisis at Microsoft,
   et al., this would seem to be a rather reasonable conclusion.


   Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu