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- Path: canberra.DIALix.oz.au!not-for-mail
- From: shayne@canberra.DIALix.oz.au (Shayne Flint)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
- Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada
- Date: 2 Mar 1996 10:43:31 +1100
- Organization: DIALix Services, Canberra, Australia.
- Sender: shayne@canberra.DIALix.oz.au
- Message-ID: <4h8233$c7p$1@canberra.DIALix.oz.au>
- References: <JSA.96Feb16135027@organon.com> <4gaa6l$8mk@post.gsfc.nasa.gov> <4gd94r$isu@mack.rt66.com> <1996Feb22.005518.13396@leeweyr.sccsi.com> <4gvrffINNlqo@anvil.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: shayne@canberra.dialix.oz.au
-
- c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca (Kazimir Kylheku) writes:
-
- >What is intrinsically unsafe about C? I could write a strict,
- >standard-conforming, anally-retentive program in any language that could kill
- >people (maliciously, of course).
- Yes, of course, but could you guarantee that a program written in such a way
- would NOT kill people. Isn't that what we really want to do? And isn't that
- where the problem is?
-
- >Software which has life-threatening consequences shoud not be left to something
- >that sacrifices intimacy with hardware for some higher purpose that has more to
- >do with bureaucracy than anything else.
- If you know anything about Ada, you will know that Ada's representation clauses
- support 'intimacy with the hardware' in a well defined, typed and standardised
- way. As for 'bureaucracy', I'm not sure what you are on about. If you think that
- Ada is somehow the result of bureacracy, then again you know little about Ada.
- Ada was in effect developed by the software development comunity through a
- controlled process that resulted in an ANSI standard for Ada in 1983 (Ada83)
- and a revised ANSI/ISO/IEC standard in 1995 (Ada95). C and C++ on the other
- hand were designed a couple of cowboys to solve immediate problems they had.
-
- >And it should certainly not be written in some poorly standardized language,
- >for which no two implementations are in agreement. C is governed by an
- >ISO standard, which, if adhered to, lets a strictly conforming program
- >translated by a strictly conforming implementation yield well-defined results.
- See comments about standards above. In addition, Ada compilers are required
- to pass a standardised set validation tests that ensure that each Ada compiler
- conforms to the ISO standard.
-
-
- Sure you can write safe code in any language, but the
- chances of doing it in C are much lower than in Ada. Why do you think
- commercial aircraft, railway, power and telecomunications companies use Ada
- for critical systems? - because Ada works, its cheaper over the life cycle,
- and its safe (and very safe when used with tools such as SPARK from Praxis
- and C-SMART from Thomson Software Products).
-
- Shayne Flint
- Software Improvements Pty Ltd
- Australia
-
-