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

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

> > My claim that Ada and C++ compilers have the same challenges when it comes to handling the physical project structure holds.
> 
> Yet Ada allows having a library of packages

Yes, but that does not change anything in this regard. One reason is that AARM does not define the meaning of this concept. In some sense, the set of source files plays the role of a library. In other words, GNAT already implements the standard notion of the library in terms of source files.

You can implement the same concept in some other way, for example with the use of relational database as a backend, but AARM still does not define the functionality of such library or why it would be any better. It might as well be as dumb as a plain set of files.

And ironically, for a large-scale system, I would not trust anything else than a dumb set of files.

> Your 
> examples are related to GNAT

Which happens to be The Ada Compiler that potential users are going to use.

> C++ on its part could not have a 
> library.

Wrong. Everything in the C++ standard is defined in terms of "as if", which means that as long as the required visible effects are supported, the underlying implementation can be anything.

> P.S. I agree that Ada has issues with separation of implementation and 
> interfaces but these are minor comparing to C++.

And yet, after so many posts were written in this discussion, I still do not see any convincing example of why Ada is sooooo much better in this regard. On the other hand, I have presented examples showing that C++ problems exist in Ada, too.

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