Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request

[kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline)]

fmdf@tiscali.it (fabio de francesco) wrote in message news:<ba2f9c57.0408221618.475d5941@posting.google.com>...
> "Richard  Riehle" <adaworks@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<GVZVc.9513$3O3.1068@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> 
> > It seems that, even when I am trying to be generous toward someone
> > with a different point-of-view, a few on my side of the argument
> > can still be offended by that very generosity.
> 
> I don't think that "offended" is the right verb, it seems excessive to
> me.
> 
> > I am satisfied that Kevin has applied his own criteria with intelligence
> > and and sincerity to reaching his conclusions.   I don't share his
> > conclusions, and given the same information, have come to a
> > different viewpoint.   My concession is not an admission of defeat
> > in the argument. 
> 
> I also don't want to make any assumptions on the cleverness of people.
> I just say that whenever you discuss matters of taste people can have
> different points of view, but in the case of a scientific problem with
> given informations people should come to the same conclusions. The
> only exceptions are either you have wrong given data or you take the
> wrong explanation path.
> He only lists wrong and 'unproven assumptions' and he also gets
> 'unrelated consequencies'.
>  
> At
> http://groups.google.com/groups?q=g:thl4042257105d&dq=&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&selm=e749549b.0408200838.43e841d%40posting.google.com&rnum=53
> Kevin says:
> 
> 1) "Yes.  The syntax, and particularly the need for explicit generic
> instantiation, makes Ada programs much longer than equivalent C++
> programs.  Longer programs take longer to write and longer to read."
> Where is the evidence that an Ada program is longer than a C++ one? (
> Unproven Assumption ).
> What does demonstrate that the time it takes to read and understand
> lines of code are related to the lenght of the code itself? (
> Unrelated Consequences ).

From http://home.t-online.de/home/christ-usch.grein/Ada/Dimension.html
by Christopher Grein:

"There exists also the Ada Issue 324, an Ada0Y proposal by the Ada
Rapporteur Group for handling physical dimensions. Unfortunately I
could not include my view on it in the conference proceedings because
the final submission date for papers had just expired when the ARG
proposal was published. So a very short outline thereof is included
only in the PowerPoint presentation. The proposal exhibits a very
clever use of generics and generic package parameters, so it is worth
reading just for the expressive power of Ada.

However because of the tremendous number of instantiations needed, it
is yet another demonstration that Ada is not suited to doing unit
checking during compile time. It is therefor no longer pursued by the
ARG.

You can find details directly in the Ada Issues Database of the Ada
Conformity Assessment Authority.

A C++ solution, which is very similar to the Ada one presented here -
it does however not include fractional powers, can be found at
http://www.fnal.gov/docs/working-groups/fpcltf/html/SIunits-summary.html.
The big difference is that C++ templates allow type checking during
compile-time, so that no overhead neither in memory space nor in
runtime is incurred. In this respect, C++ templates are more powerful
than Ada generics. However at the time of this writing (11 February
2004), not all C++ compilers, although capable of compiling the code,
are able to actually perform this type checking (as stated in the
documentation of the method)."

The need for explicit generic instantiation is a major roadblock in
building sophisticated type systems and libraries in Ada.  I
repeatedly found that repeated code which could easily be refactored
into C++ templates could not be conveniently expressed with Ada
generics.
  
> 
> 2) (Question: Is the ability to define one's own types?)
>  "That is a problem." 
> ( Unproven Assumption. He wants to demonstrate
> that a capability doesn't add anything to the power of a language,
> instead he says that the feature steals something to Ada )
>  "User defined types are less compatable with built-in types than they
> are in C++." ( This means nothing to me )
>  "This makes generic programming more difficult." ( Whom for?
> Unrelated Consequence )
>  "I find it more difficult to factor out duplication in Ada than I do
> in C++." ( This is only his problem and it doesn't prove anything )

Perhaps these isues are outside your experience as a programmer?  How
much experience do you have writing Ada generics and C++ templates?