🚀 go-pugleaf

rang@cs.wisc.edu (Anton Rang) writes:
>...scc@cl.cam.ac.uk (Stephen Crawley) says:
> >  Given mature languages like "C", there should not be much incentive
> >currently, to use Ada.
> 
>   C is mature?  There isn't even a standard for it yet!...

This is a cheap shot.  C has been developed in the natural sequence, namely
"try it first, then standardize it."  The fact that Ada was standardized
before there was even an honest working compiler for it--let alone any
useful experience with the language--is such a massive act of monstrous
stupidity that even now, years later, I (and most other programming-lang-
uage folks) have trouble believing it was done that way.

The standardization of C also followed an arduous, but very open, pro-
cess...in which the issues surrounding the language were exposed to
serious (and sometimes seemingly endless!) debate.  The Ada standard, on
the other hand, was lambasted as ill-advised, ill-considered, premature,
etc., on various counts and in various ways by leaders of the profession
and by at least one professional society (ACM).  The response from the DoD
was, essentially, "Thank you for your concerns.  Damn the torpedoes; full
speed ahead."  The Ada standardization process is something to be ashamed
of.  The refusal (and inability) to let the language evolve is precisely
the reason you're seeing comments in this newsgroup that Ada is behind the
times and falling farther behind.

As for maturity...C IS "mature" in the sense of being heavily-used and
well-understood for a long time--not "mature" in the sense of having a
well-established, hidebound bureaucracy to protect it.

>...Besides, it
> is missing a LOT of features very useful for large projects: nested
> packages, information hiding, etc.  It doesn't even have nesting in
> the namespace (writing two functions called "sort_array" generally
> leads to trouble).

Information hiding happens (and is intended to happen) at the "module"
(which essentially means "source file") level in C.  Frankly, experience
has indicated that this one level of nesting and hiding hasn't caused as
much trouble as people outside C might think.  It's simplistic, perhaps,
but it's also simple.  Nested procedures are more expensive, particularly
in the face of procedure variables--which are both useful and commonly
used in C.
-- 
+---------+     Dick Dunn    rcd@ico.isc.com    ico!rcd      (303)449-2870
| In this |         4th annual MadHatterDay [10/6/89]:
|  style  |            A Thousand Points of Madness
|__10/6___|