Illustrating Client and Implementation Readability Tradeoffs in Ada and C++

✍ Scribed by A. Parrish; D. Cordes; R. Borie; S. Edara

• Book ID: 102649524
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 909 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0038-0644
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-024x(199607)26:7<799::aid-spe36>3.0.co;2-y

✦ Synopsis

The relative merits of Ada and C++ have fostered numerous discussions among software developers. With the release of Ada 95 and its object-oriented features, we expect these discussions to intensify, particularly given the increasing number of features for which there are implementations in both languages. In this paper, we compare Ada and C++ based on the readability of class and client implementations. We examine this issue using a case study. Our case study illustrates a partial tradeoff that exists between the readability of a class and the readability of its clients. This tradeoff depends on the degree to which overloading is used; extensive use of overloading adds to class complexity, although it increases client readability.