Re: Ada to C Translator

[Dave Ptacek <drptaceknospam@collins.rockwell.com>]

An interesting viewpoint.  While I been using Ada for the better share of 13
years, and do see several benefits when comparing it to C/C++, I'm currently
in a project that is considering the porting of approx. 100k Ada sloc to
C++.

Over the years (15), this particular application became very domain
specific, was designed to run on DOS (real mode and later protected mode),
and is now heading to WinNT 4.0.  Try finding people with Ada, assembler,
DOS, Windows, MFC, various communication buses, an appreciation for creating
test applications for factory test and lastly willing to re-locate to a
"small" midwestern town.  We usually end up training inexperienced people
and hope they will stay.

Not that Ada is the limiting factor in all of this, but most new college
grads will have a C/C++ background and realize that Windows programming in
C/C++ looks pretty good on a resume.  Throw in the integrated programming
environment (Visual Studio) and several educational houses providing
immediate Windows training programs (Learning Tree), the idea of porting the
source code from Ada to C/C++ becomes an attractive option.  Is it
technically the best design choice?  For this particular application
mentioned above, probably due to the OS choice and development toolsets
available, but I certainly wouldn't make a general statement that it's the
best choice for every situation.

Dave