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Subject:
From:
Nasser Abbasi <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Nasser Abbasi <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 16 Jul 1998 16:13:05 -0700
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W. Wesley Groleau x4923 wrote:
>
> I am putting together some notes for the author of a Java book who writes
> as if he has never heard of Ada, or even of CORBA or DCE.  I'm just hoping
> to get Ada mentioned where he discusses alternatives to Java for
> distributed computing (he currently mentions Javascript, VBscript, TCL/Tk,
> and ActiveX).

I'll let someone answer the other questions.

but as for Ada vs. Java thing in general, with my limited exp. I find
that as a langauge, Ada is MUCH better (I can give many examples where
the Ada langauge is better than Java). But using Ada in real life
commerical projects is hard, as there is little support for it.

simple example. I wanted to write an ODBC based application to do some
Oracle database things (update tables, do SQL stuff , etc..).

Called Oracle, they have no ODBC drivers for Solaris or UNIX, only for
NT. If you want to write using ODBC for oracle on UNIX, you have to buy
your own ODBC driver from other places like intersolv many be. ALso,
after that, you need to go hunt the internet looking for Ada SQL
bindings, becuase the Ada standard libraries come with no SQL binding.

Now, with Java, I need do none of the above. the SUN JDK comes with the
java.sql package ready to use. Oracle also have free JDBC driver for
java you can download and use. I have not checked Sybase, I am sure they
have or will have a java ODBC based driver to download for free.

The bottom line, is that with java I have all the pieces I needed to
write my application from the platform I wanted.

So, I think the whole discusssion of which is better as langauge or
which is better for distributed applications is pointless. It is what
you can do the language in the real world that matters. Ada has no one
body that supports it (the defence just shut down the only office that
used to somewhat support its use), Java has SUN and IBM behind it to
carry it along. C++ and VB has Microsoft. Without big industry support
and some type of organization that takes care and support a langauge,
the langauge will likely not make it, no matter how good it is.

my 2 cents.

Nasser

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