From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE, REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!cernvax!chx400!bernina!neptune!c!mneerach From: mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Legislative Mandate for Ada; mindless translations Message-ID: <18641@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> Date: 18 Dec 90 17:41:57 GMT References: <2467@sparko.gwu.edu> <2449@sparko.gwu.edu> <9700@as0c.sei.cmu.edu> <2455@sparko.gwu.edu> <2585@cod.NOSC.MIL> Sender: news@neptune.inf.ethz.ch Reply-To: mneerach@iiic.ethz.ch Organization: Departement Informatik, ETH, Zurich List-Id: 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_