Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax!pasteur!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck From: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity Message-ID: <12159@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 19 Mar 91 21:14:48 GMT References: <1991Mar10.151220.2581@forwiss.uni-passau.de> <11966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Mar15.224626.27077@aero.org> Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU Reply-To: jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) Distribution: usa Lines: 29 In article , jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: > >I hate the C'ness of C++, but I find myself implementing many things in > >C++ just because of inheritance and dynamic binding. If Ada is ever > >to become mainstream (and I seriously hope it does) inheritance and > >dyn. binding had better be incorporated into the language. > > Enlighten me. How is it that many of the largest software systems > ever attempted--including all of the flight control software for > North America and all the software for the Space Station--are being > written in Ada, even though Ada doesn't have "dynamic binding"? Most of us learned about "Turing equivalence" in school. You can write any program in assembly language. The software for the Space Station (which may never be launched anyway) is being written in Ada because of government mandate, not necessarily because Ada is the best language for the job. > Second question: assume Ada got dynamic binding tomorrow. What could > be done with it that can't be done with it today? Absolutely nothing (you can do object-oriented programming in assembly language). However, programmer productivity would increase when solving large problems if their language directly supported the concepts that they are using to solve the problem, and the total life-cycle cost of the software would decrease. -- Joe Buck jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck