From: ········@bayou.uh.edu
Subject: Re: Learning from C++'s success ( was C++ briar patch )
Date:
Message-ID: <5mcq0q$6am$2@Masala.CC.UH.EDU>
Jay Martin (·······@cs.ucla.edu) wrote:
: ······@lavielle.com (Rainer Joswig) writes:
: >In article <······················@Alcatel.com.au>,
: >·············@Alcatel.com.au wrote:
[Snip]
: >> Well, the research papers give the evidence. What more do you want?
: There are no such research papers.
There have been comparative studies of C++ vs. (among other things)
Ada, Haskell and Common Lisp.
: >Well, AT&T was doing a switching system in Lisp and another one
: >in C++. The C++ system did take a lot more resources (it was
: >done as a production system). The Lisp version was more
: >like a research project (let's see what we can do). As it
: >turned out the Lisp version did have more functionality
: >at comparable speed and was *much* cheaper to built.
: This is total heresay and of course is pointless as it says nothing
: about the the long term maintanance which usually consists of like 80%
: of the project costs. If it was a research project, then it was
: highly likely that it was a poorly designed piece of crap. Most
: researchers just don't have the discipline to be good software
: engineers.
Funny, you will grasp at any straws to try to claim that C++ is
superior, but the moment you encounter evidence to the contrary,
you immediately write off the project as "a poorly designed piece
of crap". Can you say hypocrite?
I think the above is clear proof that you should not be taken
seriously.
: >This was a large project (if I remember correct, up to 100 people were
: >working on the switch based on Lisp). It did touch areas like real-time GC,
: >OODBMs, fault tolerance, the system should be down in the
: >range of a minute per year, etc.
: Well it actually "touched" them, wow!
Get your mind out of the gutter young man.
: >The group has reported about that publicly and they seemed a bit
: >frustrated that despite the clear superiority of their switch,
: >the company still wanted to market the system based on C++.
: Do to that software is a incredibly incompetent and religious field, we
: have to wonder wether the group was the usual bunch zealot crackpots.
We already know you're a hypocrite, you don't have to overdo it!
: Jay
--
Cya,
Ahmed
········@Bayou.UH.EDU (········@bayou.uh.edu) writes:
>Jay Martin (·······@cs.ucla.edu) wrote:
>: ······@lavielle.com (Rainer Joswig) writes:
>: >In article <······················@Alcatel.com.au>,
>: >·············@Alcatel.com.au wrote:
>[Snip]
>: >> Well, the research papers give the evidence. What more do you want?
>: There are no such research papers.
>There have been comparative studies of C++ vs. (among other things)
>Ada, Haskell and Common Lisp.
If you mean "Haskell vs Ada vs C++ vs Awk vs... An Experiment in
Software Prototyping Productivity" by Hudak and Jones, then I am not
impressed since this "definitive study" is about prototyping 85 line
Haskell programs. Its sickening that after 30 years this is
all Computer Science has accomplished.
<Ranting looney personal attacks deleted>
Jay
In article <···········@uni.library.ucla.edu> ·······@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin) writes:
········@Bayou.UH.EDU (········@bayou.uh.edu) writes:
>There have been comparative studies of C++ vs. (among other things)
>Ada, Haskell and Common Lisp.
If you mean "Haskell vs Ada vs C++ vs Awk vs... An Experiment in
Software Prototyping Productivity" by Hudak and Jones, then I am not
impressed since this "definitive study" is about prototyping 85 line
Haskell programs. Its sickening that after 30 years this is
all Computer Science has accomplished.
<Ranting looney personal attacks deleted>
I was about to delete those ranting looney wholesale attacks against
academia and computer science, but then -- I wanted to put my reply in
context.
It is true that the Haskell program was very short. The same was not
true for the programs written in some of the other languages,
including C++. Admittedly, though, the problem was not large to begin
with (nobody has the resources to develop a complete telephone switch
in 10 different languages only for the purpose of a comparison).
Anyway, nobody claimed that the study was "definitive". In fact, the
authors were very careful to explain the scope and the limitations of
the experiment. One can draw conclusions as one likes, but insulting
statements like the above are clearly out of place.
By the way, if academia and computer science are so sickening, then
why do you post from a UCLA Computer Science account?
--
-Matthias
In article <··············@mocha.CS.Princeton.EDU>,
·····@mocha.cs.princeton.edu (Matthias Blume) wrote:
> nobody has the resources to develop a complete telephone switch
> in 10 different languages only for the purpose of a comparison.
This falls into the same category as the statement "We can't afford to
do it right the first time, but we can afford to keep fixing it up with
band-aids and baling wire".
The truth is that most large systems would be better off if they took their
200 grunts and broke them into 10-20 competing teams, each using what they
considered the best approach. This solves 2 problems: you don't have to
try to figure out in advance who are the best programmers (or the best
programming languages), because that will subsequently become quite clear;
and you don't have to have 5 layers of 'managers' and interminable meetings
to try to coordinate 200 people.
I suspect that most companies who developed telephone switching software
didn't start out to write 10 versions of the switch program, but they
probably ended up that way.
From: Ulf Wiger
Subject: Re: Learning from C++'s success ( was C++ briar patch )
Date:
Message-ID: <338D521C.7A29@etxb.ericsson.se>
Matthias Blume wrote:
> [...] (nobody has the resources to develop a complete telephone switch
> in 10 different languages only for the purpose of a comparison).
>
Par Mattsson wrote:
> Some of them instead invented their own languages.
> Ericsson invented Erlang to build/prototype telephone switches
> since there were proper languages available.
> C++ was not even concidered.
> Erlang is a process-oriented and declarative functional language
> that looks very much like Prolog (no back-tracking).
Not entirely true.
(I did not participate in the work, so my account will
most likely be incomplete.)
I have extracted most of this info from:
http://www.ericsson.se:800/cslab/archive/archive_list.html
Ericsson didn't start out by inventing Erlang. The Ellemtel
Computer Science Lab (CSLab) wrote several prototypes in
various languages. The experiments were based on a very simple
switching system (POTS), since you don't have to build a full-
scale switch to draw conclusions.
CSLab work since 1981 included:
- POTS experiments with languages like:
o Concurrent Euclid (language with support for parallelism)
o LISP (Porting parts of the AXE environment to LISP)
o EriPascal (Pascal with support for concurrency and exceptions)
o CHILL
o Ada
o Expert systems technology (OPS4, Frames)
o Declarative languages - CCS, LPL
o Object-oriented languages - Frames, CLU
Out of these experiments came the conclusion that declarative
languages gave the simplest and most elegant solutions, but
that no available declarative language had satisfactory support
for the type of concurrency needed in a phone switch.
It was also found that object-orientation did not necessarily
solve all problems with feature interaction; the concept
of a light-weight process was found to be a more appealing model.
As far as considering C++, it is no secret (at least not in
Sweden) that Ericsson spent a large sum of money developing
next-generation telephony products in C++. Indeed, Ericsson
has developed many good products in C++. But it would be fair
to say that the C++ efforts ultimately led to a breakthrough
for Erlang. I would guess that of all the languages we have
experimented with, PLEX and C++ are the two where the aspects
of building telephony products are best understood.
If you want published documents on the research that
was carried out, you may look for these:
Problem Areas in the Use of Modern Languages for the Programming of
Telecommunication Switching
Systems.
Mike Williams.
NT-P Symposium on Languages and Methods for Telecommunications
Applications.
March 6-8, 1984, �bo.
Experiments with Programming Languages and Techniques for
Telecommunications Applications.
Bjarne D�cker, Nabiel Elshiewy, Per Hedeland, Carl Wilhelm Welin och
Mike Williams.
Software Engineering for Telecommunication Switching Systems.
April 14-18, 1986, Eindhoven.
Using Prolog for Rapid Prototyping of Telecommunication Systems.
Joe Armstrong och Mike Williams.
Software Engineering for Telecommunication Switching Systems.
July 3-6, 1989, Bournemouth.
Erlang - An Experimental Telephony Programming Language
Joe Armstrong och Robert Virding.
XIII International Switching Symposium.
May 27-June 1, 1990, Stockholm.
Programming Telephony.
Joe Armstrong och Robert Virding.
Kapitel 13 ur Strand - New Concepts in Parallel Programming.
Ian Foster och Stephen Taylor.
Prentice Hall, 1990.
--
Ulf Wiger, Chief Designer ETX/DN/XBS <·······@etxb.ericsson.se>
Ericsson Telecom AB tfn: +46 8 719 81 95
Varuv�gen 9, �lvsj� mob: +46 70 519 81 95
S-126 25 Stockholm, Sweden fax: +46 8 719 43 44
·····@mocha.cs.princeton.edu (Matthias Blume) writes:
>In article <···········@uni.library.ucla.edu> ·······@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin) writes:
> ········@Bayou.UH.EDU (········@bayou.uh.edu) writes:
> >There have been comparative studies of C++ vs. (among other things)
> >Ada, Haskell and Common Lisp.
> If you mean "Haskell vs Ada vs C++ vs Awk vs... An Experiment in
> Software Prototyping Productivity" by Hudak and Jones, then I am not
> impressed since this "definitive study" is about prototyping 85 line
> Haskell programs. Its sickening that after 30 years this is
> all Computer Science has accomplished.
> <Ranting looney personal attacks deleted>
>I was about to delete those ranting looney wholesale attacks against
>academia and computer science, but then -- I wanted to put my reply in
>context.
>It is true that the Haskell program was very short. The same was not
>true for the programs written in some of the other languages,
>including C++. Admittedly, though, the problem was not large to begin
>with (nobody has the resources to develop a complete telephone switch
>in 10 different languages only for the purpose of a comparison).
>Anyway, nobody claimed that the study was "definitive". In fact, the
>authors were very careful to explain the scope and the limitations of
>the experiment. One can draw conclusions as one likes, but insulting
>statements like the above are clearly out of place.
Someone said that their was emperical research proving language X is
better than language Y. I have looked into this before and I found
pretty much zilch research in this area. But I was hopeful was there
some new research, so I called them on it. Nope, just the single
Hudak and Jones paper which I have read before. This paper IS
"definitive" and unique because it the only paper of its kind. I
salute Hudak and Jones for doing real emperical language research and
thus real computer science. Though they probably won't do it again as
it is highly likely that their ARPA "Masters" gave them a brutal yank
on their leash and the theoretical masturbation priesthood of computer
science was not amused. What is sickening is that academic CS has
pretty much dismissed the field of programming languages, software and
emperical studies of such.
>By the way, if academia and computer science are so sickening, then
>why do you post from a UCLA Computer Science account?
Uh, could I be a PHD Computer Science student? As any PHD
computer science student knows, academic computer science is not
all its cracked up to be ( Heh, its pretty sickening).
Jay
From: Richard A. O'Keefe
Subject: Re: Learning from C++'s success ( was C++ briar patch )
Date:
Message-ID: <5n7oja$lu4$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
·······@cs.ucla.edu (Jay Martin) writes:
>on their leash and the theoretical masturbation priesthood of computer
>science was not amused. What is sickening is that academic CS has
>pretty much dismissed the field of programming languages, software and
>emperical studies of such.
Dr Isaac Balbin of RMIT (primary supervisor) and I (cosupervisor)
supervised a Masters student last year. His name was Mark Bousfield.
His topic: ``how do we tell if we made the right choice of first year
programming language?'' He is very bright and hard working, and we
were _very_ pleased with his thesis. He didn't tell us whether we
chose the right language or not (a couple of years ago we switched from
Pascal to Ada, with the pleasant result that students could run the
_same_ source code on home PCs and at RMIT (not true of Pascal) and
that they would get the _same_ _good_ runtime diagnostics in both
environments (not true of C, where runtime diagnostics for C on PCs
appear to be completely nonexistent). But he did tell us what we
would have to do to find the answer.
The funny thing is that
(a) there is almost no published work that
actually reports in useful detail on the *outcomes* of a change
or choice of first teaching language. If you are very lucky,
you'll find, "well we switched to X, and the staff are happy
about it, and the students seem to be happy about it, but we
haven't like analysed their skill acquisition or stuff, y'know."
(b) Next week we are going to be having yet another b****y argument
"shall we switch from Ada to C or Java" WITHOUT the study that
Mark Bousfield has told us to do even having been _planned_
let alone completed. Why? Has Ada proved in any way deficient
as a teaching language? *NO*. Ada has done everything we wanted;
GNAT has worked brilliantly; compiler diagnostics are good,
run-time diagnostics are better than anything available for C;
there's a free snazzy IDE for PCs; there are some good books by
some great people with fewer errors per page than any C book
except H&R and K&S, which aren't really programming textbooks.
Why would anyone consider switching from what appears to a great
teaching language to a language which has no safety nets and no
great powers (C) or to a language with no usable textbooks that
we know of and implementations (Netscrape, Exploder) that
regularly fall over and take your OS with them (Java)?
Because we don't want to go broke. The Australian government believes
that education is a privilege for the rich, and that Universities are
bludgers who've been sucking at the government's teat too long. Student
fees keep on going up and up (although staff pay doesn't go up at all;
their hours do, mind) and 'commercial reality' is to be God. You can
tell students till you are blue in the face: "there are important
concepts you need to understand before you can master C", but all they
say is "where are the Ada jobs? What kind of incompetents are you to
teach me a language that won't get me a job?" Last time we switched
languages, we considered Scheme (at my insistence), and we got phone
calls from schools careers masters saying "if you do that, we'll tell
our pupils to stay away from you."
This University at least hasn't "dismissed ... programming languages";
we've been forced to drop our compiler course because students wouldn't
take it (ditto my natural language processing masters course, sigh),
we're being forced to switch from an *extremely* good first year language
to something which will certainly be worse, by student pressure, and if
we don't pay any attention, we'll certainly go broke. The primary force
here is the *MARKET*. We have to pay attention to our market (the
students), and they have to pay attention to their market (the jobs on
offer), and the people offering jobs mostly seem to have the lemming
instinct good and strong.
As for masturbation, I expect to appear as "expert witness" in a case
where a software house contracted to produce a straightfoward accounting
system in 6 months, and 3 years later it still wasn't finished or usable.
This isn't the first such case I have been involved with, although it is
the first that looks as though it will actually go to court. There's a
heckuva lot of "masturbation" outside academia!
--
Four policemen playing jazz on an up escalator in the railway station.
Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.
From: Erik Naggum
Subject: Re: Learning from C++'s success ( was C++ briar patch )
Date:
Message-ID: <3073702728416278@naggum.no>
* Jay Martin
| Its sickening that after 30 years this is all Computer Science has
| accomplished.
verily. depressing it is. (apply for all values of "this" above.)
#\Erik
--
if we work harder, will obsolescence be farther ahead or closer?