Re: C++, Ada, ...

From	David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no>
Newsgroups	comp.arch.embedded
Subject	Re: C++, Ada, ...
Date	2021-04-20 07:50 +0200
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<s5lq3n$8ab$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(7 earlier) <s5i4gh$nb$1@dont-email.me> <ie56dqF3t0qU1@mid.individual.net> <s5jsao$cpu$1@dont-email.me> <877dkygips.fsf@nightsong.com> <ie6bglFb0rhU1@mid.individual.net>

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On 19/04/2021 23:37, Niklas Holsti wrote:
> On 2021-04-19 22:47, Paul Rubin wrote:
>> Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> writes:
>>> On 4/19/2021 14:04, Niklas Holsti wrote:
>>>> ...their HR departments say that they cannot find programmers trained
>>>> in Ada. Bah, a competent programmer will pick up the core concepts
>>>> quickly, says I.
>>>
>>> This is valid not just for ADA. An experienced programmer will need days
>>> to adjust to this or that language. I guess most if not all of us have
>>> been through it.
>>
>> No it's much worse than that.  First of all some languages are really
>> different and take considerable conceptual adjustment: it took me quite
>> a while as a C and Python programmer to become anywhere near clueful
>> about Haskell.  But understanding Haskell then demystified parts of C++
>> that had made no sense to me at all.
> 
> 
> I agree that it takes a mental leap to go from an imperative language to
> a functional languge, or to a logic-programming / declarative language.
> 
> To maintain a Haskell program, one would certainly prefer to hire a
> programmer experienced in functional programming, over one experienced
> only in C, C++ or Ada.

Certainly.  The differences between C++ and Ada are much smaller than to
Haskell.

Some languages mix imperative and functional paradigms.  In C++, you can
do a certain amount of functional-style coding - you have lambdas, and
with templates and generic functions you can manipulate functions to
some extent.  Ranges and list comprehensions are new to the latest
standard, though being library features they are not as neat in syntax
as you get in languages that support these directly (like Python or,
more obviously, Haskell).  Pattern matching is on its way too.

You see at least some functional programming features on many
interpreted languages too, like Python and Javascript.

Going the other way, you get ocaml that is basically a functional
programming language with some imperative features added on.


But for someone unused to functional programming, Haskell does look
quite bizarre.  (Though it is not at the level of APL!).

> 
>> Secondly, being competent in a language now means far more than the
>> language itself.  There is also a culture and a code corpus out there
>> which also have to be assimilated for each language.  E.g. Ruby is a
>> very simple language, but coming up to speed as a Ruby developer means
>> getting used to a decade of Rails hacks, ORM internals, 100's of "gems"
>> (packages) scattered over 100s of Github repositories, etc.  It's the
>> same way with Javascript and the NPM universe plus whatever
>> framework-of-the-week your project is using.  Python is not yet that
>> bad, because it traditionally had a "batteries included" ethic that
>> tried to standardize more useful functions than other languages did, but
>> it seems to have given up on that in the past few years.
> 
> 
> Relying on libraries/packages from the Internet is also a huge
> vulnerability. Not long ago a large part of the world's programs in one
> of these languages (unfortunately I forget which -- it was reported on
> comp.risks) suddenly stopped working because they all depended on
> real-time download of a small library package from a certain repository,
> where the maintainer of that package had quarreled with the repository
> owner/provider and had removed the package. Boom... Fortunately it was a
> very small piece of SW and was easily replaced.
> 

Would that have been a Javascript library?  It is common (mad, but
common) to pull these from external servers (rather than your own
webserver), and it would happen every time a webpage with the code is
loaded.

> The next step is for a malicious actor to replace some such package with
> malware... the programs which use it will seem to go on working, but may
> not do what they are supposed to do.

Thread

C++, Ada, ... pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2021-04-17 17:48 +0200
  Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-17 18:45 +0200
    Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-17 19:55 +0100
      Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 12:53 +0200
        Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-18 18:48 +0300
          Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 18:59 +0200
            Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-19 13:51 +0300
              Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 14:22 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-19 19:16 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 22:19 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-20 01:03 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Richard Damon <Richard@Damon-Family.org> - 2021-04-19 18:09 -0400
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-20 06:58 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 23:18 -0700
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-20 09:36 +0200
              Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 12:20 -0700
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-20 00:26 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 16:01 -0700
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-20 10:47 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-19 23:30 +0100
    Re: C++, Ada, ... Clifford Heath <no.spam@please.net> - 2021-04-18 08:29 +1000
    Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-18 10:39 +0300
      Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 14:59 +0200
        Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-18 19:23 +0300
          Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 19:26 +0200
            Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-18 19:29 +0100
              Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 22:23 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-18 23:09 +0100
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 08:56 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-19 14:04 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2021-04-19 15:16 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 12:47 -0700
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid> - 2021-04-20 00:37 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-20 07:50 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 14:26 +0200
            Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-18 19:30 +0100
              Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-18 22:17 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-18 23:17 +0100
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 08:52 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-19 10:08 +0100
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 12:15 +0200
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-19 12:00 +0100
                Re: C++, Ada, ... Tauno Voipio <tauno.voipio@notused.fi.invalid> - 2021-04-19 16:15 +0300
                Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 15:43 +0200
    Re: C++, Ada, ... pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2021-04-19 18:38 +0200
      Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 10:48 -0700
      Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-19 19:33 +0100
        Re: C++, Ada, ... Tauno Voipio <tauno.voipio@notused.fi.invalid> - 2021-04-20 15:09 +0300
          Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-20 15:29 +0100
      Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-19 22:48 +0200
        Re: C++, Ada, ... pozz <pozzugno@gmail.com> - 2021-04-19 23:17 +0200
          Re: C++, Ada, ... Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2021-04-19 15:55 -0700
            Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-20 08:21 +0200
          Re: C++, Ada, ... David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2021-04-20 08:20 +0200
  Re: C++, Ada, ... Dave Nadler <drn@nadler.com> - 2021-04-17 21:07 -0400
    Re: C++, Ada, ... Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2021-04-17 18:53 -0700
    Re: C++, Ada, ... Tom Gardner <spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> - 2021-04-18 09:42 +0100
  Re: C++, Ada, ... dalai lamah <antonio12358@hotmail.com> - 2021-04-18 14:39 +0200

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