From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FORGED_GMAIL_RCVD, FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c406e0c4a6eb74ed X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!postnews2.google.com!not-for-mail From: kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: ADA Popularity Discussion Request Date: 26 Aug 2004 14:36:08 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: <49dc98cf.0408110556.18ae7df@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 170.215.188.12 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1093556168 14076 127.0.0.1 (26 Aug 2004 21:36:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:36:08 +0000 (UTC) Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3054 Date: 2004-08-26T14:36:08-07:00 List-Id: Wes Groleau wrote in message news:... > fabio de francesco wrote: > > > What does demonstrate that the time it takes to read and understand > > lines of code are related to the lenght of the code itself? ( > > Simple disproof would be to compare a typical APL program > with an Ada program that does the same thing. But an experienced APL programmer would undoubtedly find the shorter APL program easier to read. You can not judge the readability of a program by testing whether a naive programmer can understand the program line by line. Would you consider a book on multivariate calculus to be poorly written because it was not immediately understandable by the average high-school graduate? Concise mathematical notation makes it possible to reason about mathematical objects at a high level. So, instead of "limit(e->0) [f(x + e) - f(e)] / e", we write "f'(x)" Similarly, writing applications concisely at a high level of abstraction makes it easier for programmers experienced in the domain to modify the application to meet new requirements. The Boost::spirit parser library for C++ is an excellent example of the power of C++ templates that is unmatched by Ada generics. Relatively few programmers would be capable of writing the SPIRIT parser library, but when that's what you need, Ada just won't get you there.