Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!mirror!ishmael!ada-uts!callen
From: callen@ada-uts
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Small is beautiful
Message-ID: <56700003@ada-uts>
Date: Wed, 7-Oct-87 11:29:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: ada-uts.56700003
Posted: Wed Oct  7 11:29:00 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Oct-87 05:39:38 EDT
References: <121@quick.COM>
Lines: 27
Nf-ID: #R:quick.COM:-12100:ada-uts:56700003:000:1341
Nf-From: ada-uts!callen    Oct  7 11:29:00 1987


>Object oriented programming often lets substantial portions of a program to
>be borrowed from an already working system (code sharing) which makes the
>actual amount of new code substantially smaller while still ending up with a
>giant system.  Here's how I rate them:
>
>        Forth:          1 line
>        Basic:          10 lines
>        Asm:            50 lines
>        Fortran:        100 lines
>        Pascal:         1000 lines (standard pascal w/o modules)
>        lisp:           3000 lines
>        C:              10000 lines
>        Modern Pascal:  20000 lines (w/ modules and type bashing)
>        C++:            20000 lines

What about Ada? (No snickering, please.) I've been working on the runtime
system of an Ada compiler that is written in Ada (self-bootstrapped) for
well over a year, and at this point I wouldn't trade Ada for any of the
languages on the list above, FOR LARGE SYSTEMS (quick hacks in Ada are a
pain). But then I don't know Lisp or C++. Ada really makes it easy to
write nearly bug-free code that works first time. I've only done a small
amount of programming in Modula-II, but since it shares many of Ada's
key concepts, I suspect that this is true of Modula-II as well. Of course,
I'm not about to claim that our compiler is bug-free.... :-)

-- Jerry Callen    ...{ihnp4,ima}!inmet!callen