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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,92892151eecb310d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-01-17 12:43:22 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!wn4feed!worldnet.att.net!135.173.83.72!wnfilter2!worldnet-localpost!bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3C47375B.8060604@worldnet.att.net> From: Jim Rogers User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011128 Netscape6/6.2.1 X-Accept-Language: en-us MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Porting Ada to C (Stealth development) References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 20:43:21 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.86.34.23 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 1011300201 12.86.34.23 (Thu, 17 Jan 2002 20:43:21 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 20:43:21 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:19024 Date: 2002-01-17T20:43:21+00:00 List-Id: Dale Pontius wrote: > I am taking up some new work, and would like to do it in Ada. However > there is a strong 'Do it in C so others can pick it up' bias, which I > guess makes some sense. So I'd like to do my development in Ada, and Actually, it makes no sense, but opening that can or worms begins the language war. If a person is a competent C programmer he or she should be able to learn a new language with minimal effort. My own experience is that it was easier to learn Ada, knowing C first, than it was to read and understand a lot of C programs. I am now in the business of training people in computer languages. I have little patience for the argument that learning a new language is a significant barrier to productivity. > have the occasional conversion to C to play well with others. This > probably needs to be free, as well, since it wouldn't cost money if > if I just started the project in C. (Can't justify) I did a quick scan > at www.adahome.org without luck. I'll also need to link in C libs, but > that should be straightforward and in the documentation. > When you say "play well with others", do you mean that others will take over the maintenance of the C pieces, or simply that others will want to call the Ada libraries from C? These are really two different issues, and should be handled separately. > At the moment, I'm not going to fight any sort of C vs Ada battles, > and I'd just as soon keep it completely under the table. Iff I start > to show spectacular developmental speed and track record for bugs, > then I might surface it. I may have managed to win a minor VHDL vs > Verilog fight for part (but not all) of the project, because Verilog > couldn't describe everything that needed done as simply as VHDL. I'm > not going to push my luck. > Is there already any history of mixed-language development for your team? This includes such pieces as shell scripts, perl scripts, C++ libraries, or assembler routines. My guess is that your product already uses some mixture of C and other languages. This situation is not currently a political problem. Try to deal with Ada in this light. > So for the moment, I need an Ada to C converter, and comments on how > human-readable the resulting code is. Good luck. Jim Rogers Colorado Springs, Colorado USA