Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!mcdphx!hrc!gtephx!barriost From: barriost@gtephx.UUCP (Tim Barrios) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: ada-c++ productivity Summary: maintenance productivity is the real issue Keywords: maintainability, Ada, C++ Message-ID: <307@orbit.gtephx.UUCP> Date: 1 Apr 91 15:58:48 GMT References: <11966@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Mar21.024445.8746@grebyn.com> Organization: AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, AZ Lines: 76 [i posted this a while back but think it got lost in our messed up local news system...] first of all, this whole issue of productivity is missing the point. in the real world, new development is not the issue, software maintenance is. productivity is more concerned with things like maintainability, readability, and, yes, reusability more than how fast some hacker can get yet-another sort/stack/queue/random number routine developed. try writing the same function/object/class/whatever in both C++ and Ada and give it to groups of people and ask them to make a change to its logic (eg, add a message/operation/function) and see which language is easier to change. anyone who really knows both languages (ie, not Ted Holden, see below) would agree that in general, Ada is probably more maintainable. yes, i know, good and bad programs can be written in any language. it's more of a cultural thing than a syntax issue. C/C++ grew out of the Unix/hacker culture (as did i, originally) whereas Ada has grown out of the software engineering community. plus, in new development, implementing at a code level is such an insignificant portion of the overall life-cycle that the productivity of it's generation is hardly the issue. what are the issues (and i think both sides of this discussion would agree) are things like requirements to design to implementation decomposition (OO decomposition). In article <1991Mar21.024445.8746@grebyn.com>, ted@grebyn.com (Ted Holden) writes: > In article jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) writes: > > I've been meaning to ask Mr. "I Live In The Real World" Holden this > > question for two years: how complex are the systems on which Mr. Holden > > works? > > One such is the popular VMUSIC multipart musical routine for PCs > (formerly thought to be impossible), available on BBSs. If programmed > in Ada, it would sound like two or three dogs growling at each other, > that is, if it could be programmed in Ada. I doubt it. i don't think this would categorize as part of the large project domain for which Ada was intended. where i work, we develop [commercial] systems that are on the order of 2+ million lines of code with teams of hundreds of engineers. for the past 12 or so years, we have done this work in a Pascal variant which has several similarities to Ada. we have recently done some newer products in C and have had less-than positive experiences with them, especially in the maintainability/understandability area. let's face it, C is just a step above assembly language and C++ has all the power of OOP but with the same maintainability characteristics of C. > >4) I am able to program in Pascal, C, C++, and Ada. Can Mr. Holden make > > the same claim, or does he damn Ada from, as I suspect is the case, > > a position of relative ignorance? He certainly SOUNDS ignorant. > > I damn Ada from the various horror stories I read and hear regarding it. > I have managed to avoid it in my personal life, other than having to > write interfaces between it and low-level file-handling routines written > in C. Doing that, I personally watched an Ada compiler take 25 minutes > to compile a 30 line program into a 600K byte executable; I never saw a > C compiler do that. an expression from an old Steve Martin (that's right, the comedian) skit comes to mind when i read Holden's comments: "criticize things you don't know about". i find this amazing that you blow so much how air about something you know absolutely nothing about. let's here from the many people who have worked on real projects in both languages. as if he had any credibility to start with given his inept arguments, Ted Holden's postings now have a whole new reason to be ignored. -- Tim Barrios, AG Communication Systems, Phoenix, AZ UUCP: ...!{ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!zardoz!hrc | att}!gtephx!barriost Internet: gtephx!barriost@asuvax.eas.asu.edu voice: (602) 582-7101 fax: (602) 581-4022