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- Path: news.mathworks.com!gatech!gt-news!james
- From: james@amber.biology.gatech.edu (James McIninch)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
- Followup-To: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Date: 6 Feb 1996 19:01:35 GMT
- Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <4f88if$94o@mordred.gatech.edu>
- References: <00001a73+00002504@msn.com> <4etcmm$lpd@nova.dimensional.com> <3114d8fb.5a455349@zesi.ruhr.de> <4f85h4$cml@hacgate2.hac.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: exon.biology.gatech.edu
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-
- Ron Collins (collins@thor.tu.hac.com) wrote:
- : Haug Buerger (haug@zesi.ruhr.de) wrote:
-
- : : Would you say Borland C/C++ is a professional compiler? It's
- : : cheap, that's true but that's all. It's not eaven a real ANSI C
- : : compiler. Some funktions do not work like the ANSI standard says
- : : and it's documented. Everybody thinks it's an ANSI C compiler
- : : because there is no test suite for ANSI C and everybody can say
- : : he has an ANSI C compiler.
-
- : : C++ has no real standard and most source is not portable. It's
- : : missing a test suite, too.
-
- : : I would like to know how many of these 900 platforms have a real
- : : ANSI C compiler. My experiance is that most non trivial C code is
- : : not portable and needs lots of modifications. C++ is worse.
-
- : : Haug
-
-
- : I think you're missing the point. I can buy a C/C++ compiler for a few
- : hundred $$ for just about any platform I can think of. I can get a
- : professional quality C/C++ compiler (GCC) for free for a lot of platforms.
- : And I can use these compilers to write very usefull programs. Being
- : ANSI compliant is nice, but not critical.
-
- : An Ada compiler is, by comparison, extremely expensive. And it is not
- : available for quite a few of the machines that I've had to work with.
- : (Example: there was no Ada compiler available for the MAC 3 years ago; I
- : don't know if one is available now. But that job is over, and it was
- : written in the MAC version of C. So what if it's not portable? It only
- : has to run on a MAC).
-
-
- A couple of things to keep in mind. There's a cost-free Ada compiler avail-
- able called GNAT, and that many military applications and contracts require
- that software be written in Ada (for a whole slew of reasons). For the uses
- desired by the military and many mission critical industrial concerns, Ada
- is a far superior language. Granted, I wouldn't want to use it for my
- various programming chores, but if I had an application that Ada would be
- suited to I might just give it a go.
-
- It should be noted that the GNU Ada compiler is closer to the Ada 95 spec than
- the GNU C++ compiler is to the proposed ANSI standard spec (that's quickly
- changing but still holds).
-
-
-
- : I really don't care how good Ada is. If I can't find it, or my company
- : can't afford it, it's totally useless to me.
-
- If you'd like to play around with GNAT, you can fetch it from cs.nyu.edu in
- the /pub/nat directory. You'll find the sources for the compiler and binaries
- for:
- Solaris x86
- Windows 95 / Windows NT (x86)
- Linux (a.out)
- MS-DOS
- NetBSD (i386)
- Ultrix (Dec)
- OS/2
- HP PA-RISC (HPUX)
- Linux ELF
- DEC Alpha (OSF)
- SGI Irix 5.3
- SPARC Solaris
- SPARC SunOS
-
- GNAT is built on top of the GNU GCC 2.7.2 compiler.
-
-
- : -- Collins --
- :
- : -----
- : The views expressed here are mine alone.
-
- : Ron Collins/Hughes Aircraft Company/M20,P20/Tucson Az 85706
- : rcollins@thor.tu.hac.com collins@seagull.rtd.com
- : ยก----
-
-
-