Re: Ada Popularity: Comparison of Ada/Charles with C++ STL (and Perl)

[James Alan Farrell <anonymous@anonymous.com>]

On 21 Sep 2004 17:21:38 -0700, kevin.cline@gmail.com (Kevin Cline)
wrote:

>As promised in the Ada popularity thread, I have taken one of the
>Charles examples and reimplemented it in C++.  I used only the
>standard C++ language and libraries.  The Ada/CHARLES main program
>body is 118 (non-blank) lines of code, plus an additional 40 lines of
>instantiations in eight other specification files, for a total of 158
>lines and 9 files.  The C++ implementation is 76 (non-blank) lines of
>code in a single file.  For grins, I also wrote the program in Perl. 
>That took 14 lines.
>
>Summary:
>
>Ada/Charles 158 lines, 9 files
>C++         76 lines
>Perl        14 lines
>
>You can compare the implementations at
>http://www.geocities.com/kc0a/wordcount.html

Just have to put my $0.02 in on this:

Does this prove that perl is the best language?  If so, perhaps we
should all switch our avionics projects over to perl.  Must be it will
be easier to code and maintain, safer to fly, and run just as fast.

The things that make a language a "good" language are many and
complex, and are different in different circumstances.  If I need a
small utility that compares lines in different text files, I find perl
much easier than Ada.  On the other hand, if I have a very large
project that must always perform "correctly", I've not found a
language that can beat Ada.

But then I've never used Eiffel.

James Alan Farrell