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

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

> page 335 in §6.2 C++ Constructs and * Compile-Time Coupling:
> * The word ‘excessive’ is practically screamed in context here, as in:  C++ headers' excessive compile-time coupling.

The coupling is exactly the same as in Ada, where a change in the *private* part of the package specification forces all clients to be recompiled, even though they are presumably not affected by such modifications. The object model is the same in both Ada and C++, which means that the compiler needs the same kind of knowledge about how types and objects are structured.
There is absolutely no difference between C++ and Ada here.

> Janus Ada and Visual Studio C++ are exactly the same compiler, eh?  who knew?

GCC and GCC are exactly the same compiler. Interestingly, bragging about that was a marketing strategy to convince potential customers to try Ada.
Now, Janus Ada and VC++ might be different, but I doubt they substantially differ in how they treat files as the physical source code items. I also guess that reading text files is what Ada and C++ front-ends of GCC do similarly.
Stop trolling.

> ••C++ objects have a phenomenal tendency to get tangled up in each other••.

Ada somehow it was necessary to invent "limited with" for Ada. The motivation for this, as explained in the Ada textbooks, was exactly to deal with the problem of cyclic dependencies.
Stop trolling.

> Ada specifications do not utilize primitive header-file textual inclusion mechanisms.

They do, they are just a little bit smarter in how they do it by forcing names to be declared within packages. This is the added value in Ada, but easy to replicate in C++. In any case, the compile-time coupling is present in both languages and can be seen when some root package spec is updated in a large project.

For other citations, you have failed (or rather did not even attempt) to demonstrate that the given challenges do not appear in Ada and so you did not convince me.

> Lakos's physical design is omitted by nearly all C++ coursework

Sure. The physical design challenges become relevant in codebases that span millions of lines of code. Typical students do not produce that much during their homeworks in a one-semester courses and there are more important things to teach that they will need earlier.

BTW - my favorite argument in such discussions is that by writing your posts you are relying on multiple large-scale C++ software systems working properly. Feel free to keep ignoring it.

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