2023-10-10 22:02:22-04:00 - Are C and C++ easier to learn than the Ada programming language?

I often read people on the Internet opining that the Ada programming language is harder to learn that C and C++. I do not think that is true. I think learning to write incorrect programs in C and C++ is easier than learning Ada in general, but it is much easier to learn to write a correct program in Ada than in C and C++!

Ada is a much more carefully designed and specified language and its design makes it a much safer programming language to learn to use correctly. An Ada programming writing a program will encounter more compile time errors, and need to think more about types, but in return will end up with a safer and easier to understand program.

C and C++, on the other hand, have so many ways that the programming can shoot themselves in the foot, that it is very, very hard to ensure that all of a program is written correctly. Many things that would be caught at compile time in Ada are missed in C and C++. Easy to write an incorrect program, but incredibly difficult to ensure that a program is correct.

I suspect that essentially all C and C++ are essentially incorrect. Certainly the prevalence of security problems and other bugs in C and C++ seems to support that.

I think Ada is one programming language that more people should be exposed to. It is very well suited as a general purpose programming langauge, and a number of properties that also make it very well suited to mission critical and safety critical programs, with interesting features for formal definition and analysis, concurrent programming, real-time programming, and embedded programming.