From: vonhend@ibm.net
Subject: Re: Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement
Date: 1998/02/18
Date: 1998-02-18T00:00:00+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <34eb208c.0@news1.ibm.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: dewar.887765847@merv
In <dewar.887765847@merv>, dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:
>Joe said
>
><<As for the relative complexity of Ada83 as of ten years ago, the
>comparison of the day was C, and there was no doubt then that Ada83
>compilers were a great deal more complex than C compilers. I became
>curious on the issue, and compared the DEC Ada compiler with the DEC "C"
>compiler on the VAXen here. The DEC Ada compiler executable image was
>about ten times larger than the DEC C compiler image. While size is not a
>direct measure of complexity, ten to one is still a significant
>difference.
>>>
I don't recall such a large difference in sizes 10 years ago. But I was using
VMS (as opposed to Ultrix) and the system run-time libraries were all installed
as shared.
>
>The factor of ten, if real, means that the C compiler was very poor indeed.
>Why do I say this? Because in a good C compiler, the code generator will
>be by FAR the largest component of the compiler, and the same is true
>of an Ada compiler. For example, in GNAT, the gcc backend is larger
>than the gnat front end.
Actually, the VAX/VMS C compiler was one of the best in the business.
It generated smaller and more efficient code than any other commercially
available C compiler (with the exception of the GNU C compiler, when it
came out.)
>
<snip>
>In fact I suspect the factor of ten was, for whatever reasons, an apple
>and oranges comparison (all sorts of things can distort such comparisons,
>e.g. static vs dynamic linked libraries, debugging information, inclusion
>of tools etc.
>
>Actually I rather suspect the C compiler for the Vax was pretty simple
>minded. The Vax was one of these machines where you can write a fairly
>simple minded compiler and it is not too terrible :-)
>
It wasn't simple minded at all. See above. It is true that a number of
features in VAX architecture and in the VMS operating system made it
easier to write an efficient C compiler, but the same argument applies
to Ada. In fact, the VMS process model fit very nicely with the Ada task
model, so tasking worked much better under VMS than any Unix system.
Mark Von Hendy
LMTO
next prev parent reply other threads:[~1998-02-18 0:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 53+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
1998-02-15 0:00 Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-15 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Ralph Paul
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Jon S Anthony
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Simon Wright
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-03-05 0:00 ` Robert I. Eachus
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Joe Gwinn
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-18 0:00 ` vonhend [this message]
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Simon Wright
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Dan Moran
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Joe Gwinn
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-18 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-19 0:00 ` John English
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Luis Espinal
1998-02-22 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-23 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-02-24 0:00 ` Jonas Nygren
1998-02-24 0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
1998-02-25 0:00 ` Keith Thompson
1998-02-25 0:00 ` Nick Roberts
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Laurent Guerby
1998-03-03 0:00 ` Matthew Heaney
1998-03-03 0:00 ` Stanley R. Allen
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Ada's complexity Steve Furlong
1998-02-20 0:00 ` Markus Kuhn
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement Brian Rogoff
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Robert Dewar
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Andi Kleen
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Brian Rogoff
1998-02-17 0:00 ` Geert Bosch
1998-02-19 0:00 ` Parsing Ada and C++ Steve Furlong
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Papers saying Ada as an overly complex language and hard to implement nabbasi
1998-02-16 0:00 ` Yongxiang Gao
1998-02-16 0:00 ` nabbasi
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
1998-02-18 0:00 Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-96
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox