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Sender: "Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
X-To: Gabe <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 18:31:27 -0400
From: Jack Beidler <[log in to unmask]>
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Take a look at the name of some of the people on the Generic Java
committee and you will see a very definite Ada influence - e.g. Norm Cohen.

Actually, Generic Java is closer than you think, there is a beta version
and its pretty solid.  Because of the obvious syntactic relationship
between Java and C++, the notion for Java generics is analogous to C++
generics.  I've been using Java for a couple of years now after 15 years
of playing with Ada.  I must confess that my approach to Java has been
biased by Ada, and that bias is for the better.  I am saddened by the
great hype over Java when I see the poor quality of the Java reference
books that are written in a very shallow way and make very poor use of
Java interfaces (like an Ada specification file) and very few clues as
to how to create Java software so that it is extendable.

If you want to see a great example of bad software take a look at Java's
API and it LinkedList class, which by definition of its methods MUST be
inefficient, yet so many Java books use it.

Jack Beidler

Gabe wrote:

>I am a huge fan of Ada.  Unfortunately right now I am working in Java.  I heard
>rumblings that the project I am working on will have to be rewritten to take
>advantage of generics (and thus have to wait until JDK 1.5 realistically -
>which is another release of the Java language, sometime in the future).  My
>first thought was - "when will Java catch up with Ada?"  I hesitated to say
>this to anyone else for a few reasons, but the first was because I feel it
>isn't possible to get an unbiased history of computer languages.  I would like
>to see what contributions were made by whom at what time - and honestly -
>without hype, spin, marketing, or other lies.  Does anyone know if this exists?
>
>(also, it would be interesting to see just what contributions Ada made, because
>everything I hear now for why Java is good are exactly the same things I heard
>many years ago that made Ada good, only this time you'd be the fool to think
>they weren't true).
>
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--
Dr. John (Jack) Beidler, Professor of Computer Science
Computing Sciences Department, University of Scranton, Scranton, PA 18510
EMAIL: [log in to unmask] | PHONE: 570.941.7446 | FAX: 570.941.4250

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