Re: Is strong typing worth the cost?

[Gary Scott <Gary.L.Scott@lmtas.lmco.com>]

Larry Hazel wrote:
> 
> Wes Groleau wrote:
> >
> > > We have the Ada vs. C report from Rational,
> > > the Ada vs. C report from Plattsburgh (McCormick),
> > > I read, but can't remember where, an Ada vs. Fortran
> > > report, and there have been others.
> >
> > I wish I knew how to find the Ada/Fortran comparison.
> > It was in the 1980s, and some company decided to give
> > the same requirements to two teams, one to use Ada
> > and one to use Fortran.
> >
> Wes - It may have been SAIC.  We converted a pilot training simulator from
> assembly language to Fortran 77.  The company funded an R&D project to convert
> the Fortran to Ada.  It was quite successful, and found some errors in the
> Fortran.  I didn't ever see a report on the results but I'm sure there was one.

But on the other hand, I can site an equally disastrous and quite large
conversion from Fortran to Ada in the mid 90's (an engineering system
integration and software development tool set and associated fixture). 
Later ones went from Fortran to C much more successfully.  And yes,
there were errors in the original Fortran.  There were also introduced
numerous errors in the C code that the Fortran code did correctly.

> 
> Larry