From: "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>
Subject: Re: Ada to C/C++ translator needed
Date: 1996/09/29
Date: 1996-09-29T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <01bbae25$67c669a0$32ee6fcf@timhome2> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 52ltk5$qlf@news1.halcyon.com
Ken Pizzini <ken@coho.halcyon.com> wrote in article
<52ltk5$qlf@news1.halcyon.com>...
> In article <01bbad6e$67743f20$32ee6fcf@timhome2>,
> Tim Behrendsen <tim@airshields.com> wrote:
> >Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote in article
> >>[snip numerical program test UltraSparc; cc: 30s, gnat: 27s,]
> >>[stalin 26s (Scheme), f77: 25s]
> >>
> >> I can't think of any reason to convert the Ada code to C,
> >> especially as the Ada compiler that got this result is free
> >> and supports the Ada 95 *standard* interface with C, so that calling
> >> existing C code from Ada is a breeze.
> >
> >I hope you're not suggesting that comparing compilers on one
> >system with one program tells you *anything* about the relative
> >merits of languages ...
>
> What I read in his results is that the quality of a compiler is
> more important to performance than the language. Ignoring
> the cc result the value "26 +/- 1 seconds" sounds pretty even.
> It would be interesting (to me, not this group) to know how
> gcc 2.7.2 would do on the C version of the program, since it
> shares the same back-end as gnat, and is the C compiler used
> by the stalin test.
Oh, most definitely the quality of the compiler is everything (how
could it not be?). The context of the thread is conversion of an
Ada program to a C program, and it seems as if these numbers
were meant to "prove" that Ada can be just as efficient as C,
which is apparently true for this one program on this one platform.
However, to generalize on that basis that Ada is *always* as
efficient as C is dangerous thinking, particularly for the original
poster's "real" application software that he wants to convert to C.
In fact, I can show you APL lines of code that could potentially
beat an equivalent C program (because there are so many fundamental
primitives are are natively implemented), but that doesn't mean
I want to write MS/Word using APL.
And BTW, it may well be *true* that Ada can be as efficient
as C. You simply can't prove it in this manner. Show me a CAD
system, RDBMS, heck, id Software's Quake! written in both C and
Ada (or Scheme) using the same algorithms, and *then* tell me the
results.
Actually, id *does* release the C source code of Wolfenstein 3D,
the first real first-person texture-mapped game. It would be an
amusing project to convert it to various languages and see what
happens, e.g., how much time to compute a frame.
-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@a-sis.com)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1996-09-29 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 46+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1996-09-25 0:00 Ada to C/C++ translator needed Emmanuel Champommier
1996-09-25 0:00 ` David Weller
1996-10-02 0:00 ` B|rje Norden
1996-10-04 0:00 ` David Weller
1996-10-05 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-10-05 0:00 ` Frank Manning
1996-10-06 0:00 ` Samuel Tardieu
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Richard Kenner
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-10-08 0:00 ` Stephen Leake
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-10-08 0:00 ` Frank Manning
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Erik Magnuson
1996-09-26 0:00 ` Ian Ward
1996-10-02 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1996-10-02 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
[not found] ` <52feul$os2@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
1996-09-28 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-09-29 0:00 ` Ken Pizzini
1996-09-29 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen [this message]
1996-09-29 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-09-30 0:00 ` William Clodius
1996-10-01 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Peter Seebach
1996-10-02 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-10-05 0:00 ` Lawrence Kirby
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Peter Seebach
1996-09-30 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-10-01 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-10-01 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-10-02 0:00 ` Ian Ward
1996-10-02 0:00 ` Tim Behrendsen
1996-10-06 0:00 ` Tanmoy Bhattacharya
1996-10-06 0:00 ` Lawrence Kirby
1996-10-08 0:00 ` Peter Seebach
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Tanmoy Bhattacharya
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1996-10-02 0:00 Simon Johnston
1996-10-07 0:00 ` Richard Riehle
1996-10-09 0:00 ` Richard A. O'Keefe
1996-10-15 0:00 ` Tucker Taft
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