Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada; mindless translations

[mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher)]

In article <2467@sparko.gwu.edu>, mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael
Feldman) writes:
> Referring to Charlie Sampson's note on translations:
> 
> Of course the computing business has seen this translation stuff before.
> I hope nobody would seriously consider just mechanically translating
> Cobol to Ada for the hell of it. Would you all agree that unless a
> system needs _serious_ revision, we shouldn't fix what ain't broke?
> 
> Given pragma INTERFACE and some reasonable way to call Ada programs from
> another language (I know, it's not easy as things stand now), it seems to
> me that even a multi-language system is better than either perpetuating
> old languages just for module-to-module compatibility or mindlessly
> translating badly-written Cobol into badly-written Ada. Who agrees ?
> Is there any consensus on this out there (after all, I'm stuck in the
> Ivory Tower :-))?

Amen ! (From another Ivory Tower).

Could it be that sometimes even for new projects, a multi-language system 
is better than a single-language one. When I read about writing expert 
systems in Ada, I have the impression that this is not exactly the kind
of thing Ada is good at. Wouldn't it be better to write the "expert" part
in Prolog ?

> Mike Feldman

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch
   "These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can 
    even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, _Johnny Mnemonic_