On 2010-08-04, Paul Rubin <no.em...@nospam.invalid> wrote: > Grant Edwards <inva...@invalid.invalid> writes:
>> The issue that would prevent its use where I work is the inability to >> hire anybody who knows Ada. ... >> That said, the last time I looked the Ada spec was only something like >> 100 pages long, so a case could be made that it won't take long to >> learn. > > Well, I don't know Ada (I've read about it but not written actual > code), so maybe I shouldn't be the one saying this, but geez, it's > another imperative, procedural language, like Algol or Pascal or even > C. Its type is much more serious than C's but shouldn't be a problem > for anyone who uses C++ or Java generics. I agree 100%. > It also has a real module system unlike more commonly used languages, > but 1) that part seems easy to understand; and 2) usually that's used > for multi-programmer projects, so as long as there's some reasonable > proportion of experienced users on the team, the inter-module > interfaces should be sensible and less experienced users can just > program to existing interfaces and/or get some help from others. > Ada's module system is much simpler than (say) ML's. > >> I don't know how long the C++ language spec is, but I'm betting it's >> closer to 1000 than 100. > > I don't know about an official spec. Stroustrup's "The C++ > programming language" is about 1000 pp, but it's a textbook, with > lots of examples, exercises, etc. I read through an earlier > (shorter) edition in a couple of evenings a long time ago and it all > made sense. It has some hairy aspects like the notorious template > metaprogramming, but most users simply won't get involved with that. > Python has its own obscure and confusing features if that matters. I couldn't get anybody to use Python either. :/ The problem has nothing to do with the relative merits of the languages. The problem is inertia. > I think I'm a reasonably good Python programmer but I've never > written a special metaclass and wouldn't really know how to. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I would like to at urinate in an OVULAR, gmail.com porcelain pool -- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list