Re: Which programming Language
On Sun, Feb 08, 2009 at 11:13:22AM -0500, Jeff Soules wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 8, 2009 at 8:13 AM, Douglas A. Tutty <dtutty@vianet.ca> wrote:
> In 10 years, if you want to change the program, you need to change the
> source and recompile, just like with C. The issue is just that the
> language is still changing, so there's no guarantee that any compiler
> for new hardware will recognize your old language conventions.
> That'll throw up the same roadblocks whether you compile a standalone
> executable or stick with the interpreted plaintext script file.
Its the changing language that's the issue. Even C has this problem, in
that when GNU decides to go from libc6 to e.g. libc7 (or libc10), will
the library functions still work or will the source need fixing.
Sure, C has ANSI (ISO) standards, but every compiler (including gcc) has
extensions to it that one almost has to use to get things done.
With Ada, you don't have to use extensions unless you want to access an
underlying OS (where you would use platform-specific library calls). If
there is not underlying OS, you write very-platform-specific assembler
routines (or use a package of them written by whoever made the
hardware). Thus, the only compiler/platform specific (non-portable)
stuff is directly tied to the underlying hardware.
Ada is also a direct descendant of Pascal, extends it beyond its limits
as a teaching language, fixes problems that were discovered after it was
made, and Ada95 adds the OO stuff (if you want to use OO).
Doug.
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