[Info-vax] [OT] Programming languages, was: Re: Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Simon Clubley]

On 2013-02-01, Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
> In article <kegcsp$nke$3 at dont-email.me>,
> 	Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>> On 2013-02-01, VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG <VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG> wrote:
>>> In article <an0jjrFduj7U1 at mid.individual.net>, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>>
>>>>I've seen more comments in COBOL than in Ada.  Does that make COBOL a
>>>>better language for writing an F16 Flight Control System?
>>>
>>> Does that make Ada a better language for writing a financial application?
>>>  
>> 
>> Actually, Ada probably _is_ a better language than COBOL for writing
>> financial applications. :-)
>
> Not a chance.  It is actually debatable that Ada is a better language
> for any application.  If it had stuck to its original goals, maybe
> but once it became a mouse designed by committee all bets were off.
>

You just have to make sure you stay with the core set of features and only
use the additional features if you need them.

My experience is with Ada 95; I have not bothered looking at any of the
later versions as I have not yet seen anything I really need in them.

BTW, sometimes I go looking for new languages which can be used for real
time embedded programming on the typical boards available today and have
been designed to be safer than C.

I've come across multiple versions of Oberon, Modula 2/3, and Pascal and
out of this list Ada still seems more viable for this (when you want
something more than C) than those languages.

Yes, I know about C++ :-), but I have decided not to go down that path
for my own embedded projects. What is been taught by universities as
Ada's replacement these days ?

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world