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Sender: "Team Ada: Ada Advocacy Issues (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
From: "S. Ron Oliver" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 3 Oct 2000 07:12:42 -0600
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Reply-To: "S. Ron Oliver" <[log in to unmask]>
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At 02:35 PM 10/2/00 -0500, W. Wesley Groleau x4923 wrote:
> > demo or little throw-away app at least as fast, and usually faster, in
> > Ada.  There are more powerful language constructs that simply do more,
> > more correctly, in a single statement.  Of course it helps to use my
> > personal toolkit of handy Ada code, just as an experienced C* person would
> > use his.  My fingers can also type "if x then" faster than "if(x)"
>
>Me, too, for all of the above reasons, PLUS the fact that I've got
>75 KSLOC of Ada experience and only 1.5 of C  :-)
>
>Which means you can't judge by me.  :-)  But it does seem that people
>who have equal experience in both choose Ada more often than not.

Yes, and for good reasons.

There are actually too different aspects to the MYTH that one can do
something faster in C than in other languages.

1.      I have done quite a bit of work in C without feeling I could get
things done very quickly.  More importantly I've worked with a number of
people who would swear they could do things faster in C.  Ironically, those
were invariably the people who rarely did much of anything of value.  Good
talkers, low producers.  That is, the MYTH seems to be more about people
with weak egos patting themselves on the back because they have, at some
time, done SOMETHING in C, than it is a credible report of their
experience.  In general, these people are so unscientific they would not be
able to collect productivity data, much less report it in a credible manner.

2.      There are a number of people who understand software so poorly, in
general, and who understand languages poorly in particular, who believe it
is reasonable to implement non-trivial software using C.  These people
would do little or low quality work in ANY environment.  Their problem is
not the language as much as their utterly inadequate perspective on the
nature of software development.

Of course, I could gone on and on  . . . . .

sro

S. Ron Oliver, semi-retired professor of Computer Science and Computer
Engineering.  www.csc.calpoly.edu/~sroliver

Tire of sucky software! ?  Check out www.caressCorp.com and follow the
links to software sucks and The Oliver Academy.

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