Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!petunia!news From: jdudeck@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (John R. Dudeck) Newsgroups: comp.object Subject: Re: Readability of Ada Message-ID: <280dd054.63b7@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> Date: 18 Apr 91 16:59:00 GMT References: <1991Apr17.164813.22567@visix.com> Organization: Cal Poly State Univ,CSC Dept,San Luis Obispo,CA 93407 Lines: 58 In an article amanda@visix.com (Amanda Walker) wrote: >In article jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim >Showalter) writes: > Corollary: the term "verbose", applied to a programming language, > is COMPLIMENTARY, not perjorative. >Eh, only up to a point. It is possible to be *too* verbose, after all. >I don't want my code looking like a Stephen Donaldson novel... :) I came across the book by Knuth about WEB, where programs look like novels or poetry or something. You run them through a preprocessor and get Pascal out. Gross. I couldn't even finish the book. > > 4) C++ is scant improvement over C in terms of its support for > readability. > >No argument here :). I'd even say it's a step backward, although I do >admit to liking // comments. C++ is more difficult than C to understand because it adds a whole level of complexity that isn't visible in the code. For example polymorphic data structures apply different member functions to an object depending on the object's type. But the mechanism for this is implicit in the language. This permits C++ programs to be more compact than C programs, because the mechanism doesn't have to be part of your code. The result is that when reading a C++ program, you have to have a pre-existing understanding of the mechanism of polymorphic function calls. I would say that this makes the C++ program less readable. As I understand the philosophy of the oringal design of Ada, this type of mechanism was EXPLICITLY avoided by the language designers, in order to avoid difficulties of understanding it by less-skilled programmers that have to maintain the code. > The culture that has grown up around Ada is, like the language, > software engineering oriented. > >From what I have seen so far, the Ada culture, insofar as it exists, is >oriented around government contracting... Well, I would say Ada is designed to prevent clever or subtle programming, which is probably a good thing in larger projects. >Your Ada example seems to be something of a red herring; you could write >an Ada function that's just as hacky and scrunched up as your C example. >Holding these two examples up as equivalent, and thus proving your >point, is a straw man argument... What hasn't been shown is the obfuscated Ada version and the verbose C version :^). -- John Dudeck "You can only push jdudeck@Polyslo.CalPoly.Edu simplicity so far." ESL: 62013975 Tel: 805-545-9549 -- AT&T promotional brochure