From: obry@flash.bellcore.com (Pascal Obry)
Subject: Re: FORTRAN bug(was Re: C++ vs. Ada -- Is Ada loosing?)
Organization: /u/obry/.organization
	<1992Dec8.172551.16780@newshost.lanl.gov>
	<1992Dec9.060218.23940@seas.gwu.edu>
	<1992Dec11.132942.24054@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
	<OBRY.92Dec11164203@cheesesteak.flash.bellcore.com>
	<1992Dec14.170013.18494@mksol.dseg.ti.com>
Date: 16 Dec 92 09:40:56


>>Why do you use english ?
>
>Because it's what everyone else speaks?  If this is your defense of

I hope you didn't mean *everyone*, because in this case you would have
forgotten 3/4 of the world (and maybe more in the univers). Anyhow if you mean
that you should travel a bit !

>Ada, it is a poor one.  If you want something that 'everybody can
>read', you should be using COBOL.  It was designed with the idea in
>mind that MANAGERS should be able to look at a program and tell what
>it does without knowing the language. 

I had to learn COBOL for one of my courses 5 years ago, and by the way it
does very well what it is suppose to do : file manipulation and form to enter
data.

>Why do you use english ?

Because it's what everyone else speaks?  If this is your defense of
Ada, it is a poor one.  If you want something that 'everybody can
read', you should be using COBOL.  It was designed with the idea in
mind that MANAGERS should be able to look at a program and tell what
it does without knowing the language. 

>( > @ - + / ~ $

>==============================
>Because I'am the only one to know this language I put below the dictionary :

>> this
>( try
>$ word
>+ it
>, -
>/ is
>@ language
>~ without
>==============================


>>I like Ada because you can *read* it. And this seem to be one of the most
>>important thing about a language. With goods choices for the identifier, you
>>can read an Ada progam like a text, you don't have to translate what you read

>>Golly gee whiz, you have to actually KNOW THE LANGUAGE to read it.
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>Horrors!  Oddly enough, I expect anyone reading a program and
>>expecting to understand it to be able to read the language.  If you
>>hand somebody a bunch of Ada code, they're going to be able to read
>>and understand it?  Gee, how is that going to work?  They're going to
>>know what pragmas do, things like packages and generics, etc.?  I
>>don't THINK so.

I don't agree here. let me take a small example :

In C++ :

	cout << "un text" << endl;
	c++;
	if (i) { ... };                 /* let suppose i is an integer */
	for (k=0; k<4; k++) {...}

In Ada :

	text_io.put_line ("Un text");
	c := c + 1;
	if i = 1 then ... end if;
	for k in 0 .. 3 loop ... end loop;

I bet that people that don't know either C++ and Ada will understand the Ada
code. Could we think the same of C++ code ? there is too much conventions
in C/C++ :

	if (i) {..}
		true if i = 1, you can invent that, you have to learn it

	for (k=0; k<4; k++) {...}
		first parameter is to initialize
		second stop test
		third whatever you want

Ok, this is only one instruction. But don't you think that a whole program is
a set of instructions.

And we can find a lot of more exemple like this. But I don't want to start a
language war.

Anyhow this is only one part of the readability. The low-level readability or
instruction readability. I don't mean that an Ada algorithm of many lines will
be easy to understand at the first look. But at least, I think it will be
easy to follow line by line what it does.

An Ada program does what it says.

Pascal.

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  `` inheritance is surely a good answer, but who knows the question ? ''
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada