dana@gmu90x.UUCP (J Dana Eckart) (04/30/89)
In article <39400015@m.cs.uiuc.edu> render@m.cs.uiuc.edu writes: > >Written 8:12 pm Apr 25, 1989 by billwolf%hazel.c@hubcap.clemson.edu: >> Personally, I'd like to see a good COBOL vs. Ada study, >> if anybody knows of one (or is interested in doing one)... > >Why? This would be like comparing a pterodactyl and a red-tailed hawk. They >both fly, but they're at different evolutionary stages. If you are going to use such an analogy, please be careful. It is not quite correct to say that each creature is at a "different evolutionary stage". A better (although still imperfect) description is that each creature fills a different ecological nitch (or at least fills it better than other creatures of that time). > A better study would >be C++ vs. Ada, since they're both touted as being on the leading edge of PLs >for software engineering. Given a more careful wording of the analogy makes it more appropriate to the question of programming language comparison. To yield a useful comparison, the programming languages being compared should (must?) fill the same "programming nitch". That is they should belong to the same programming paradigm. Of course, everything in this posting could be wrong... J Dana Eckart UUCP: ...!(gatech | pyrdc)!gmu90x!dana ...!pyrdc!nowhere!dana INTERNET: dana@gmu90x.gmu.edu SNAIL: P.O. Box 236/Fairfax, VA 22030-0236