[M3devel] Downsides of Modula-3 ?

[Mika Nystrom]

Now that I have the rather unpleasant task of writing C code for a client,
I have a few things I "like" about C and that I "miss" somewhat when
I write Modula-3.

I find that I sort of like the C preprocessor.  But maybe it's just the
sort of code I'm writing with it... (test programs, which need lots and
lots of annotations and instrumentation, something easy to do with cpp).

No alloca....

No varargs...

No real "const" (Java "final").  Sometimes WITH can do it.

No GO TO.............. can't believe I just wrote that but Modula-3 had
as one of its design objectives to be a good target for code generation,
and having goto would make that easier!  (Look at the C-Mix partial
evaluator for an application.)

A C++ programmer would undoubtedly miss a lot of crazy C++ stuff 
that lets you do tricky stuff entirely without heap allocation.
And operator overloading.

Then there are some annoying implementation limitations:

No EXTENDED floating point in the standard implementation.

Bugs in the "standard" threading library (pthreads based).  Have
to use the longjmp hack version.

Dubious "enhancements" relative to the Green Book: LONGINT, WIDECHAR
(and a lot of issues with TEXT as a result).  And efficiency problems
in the CM3 code in *some cases* (compared with the older SRC M3).

----

My own evaluation of the above is that the things lacking relative to C
are really pretty minor and the language is so much easier to use
and better engineered that you almost never say to yourself "oh I wish
I could write this procedure in C" (you might say it of one line of code).

The implementation issues are things that could "easily" be fixed by
someone who had the time..

Oh regarding efficiency problems: I still find that CM3 with optimization
turned on produces code that runs faster and with a far smaller memory
footprint than code doing the same thing in Java, most of the time.
That's when you try to do as close to an apples-to-apples comparison
as possible.  If you take into account the fact that in Modula-3 you can
allocate structured memory in "batches" (called "arrays"!) the difference
is even bigger.  Modula-3 also links far easier with C and Fortran than
Java does.

     Mika



penn43 at gmx.com writes:
>An object appraisal must take into account the problems too. So I am asking yo
>u, could you please mention any downsides of using Modula-3, in your experienc
>e?
>
>Of course, the non-existent language community has already been mentioned as a
> major downside. 
>And the lack of documentation.
>What about other issues, such as compiler efficiency? Or interaction with fore
>ign libraries?
>
>Thanks
>
>Marresh