Re: Ada vs. C

[rlk@rational.com (Bob Kitzberger)]

The Quelisher (kendal@freenet.scri.fsu.edu) wrote:
: Robert Dewar wrote:
: > That's bogus, comparable programs in Ada and C will generate 
: > executables of the same size, at least using a technology like GNAT. 

[Ada vs. C hello world example]

: When I compiled each of the above here are the file sizes that resulted:
: 	C ----> 24,576
: 	Ada -->	253,952

But these aren't real-world programs.  You'll probably discover that
much of the Ada overhead is fixed -- runtime requirements for tasking
(and you may be able to remove much of that if you don't use
tasking).

: I understand though that there is a tradeoff between file size and
: functionability of a program, but let's take PC's for example. Who wants
: to run a 6 mb program written in Ada when a 2mb program written in C
: does the same thing?

Of course no one wants to.    But basing observations on "hello
world" is silly.  I suspect that if you use the same underlying
back-end technology, the size of the Ada vs. C programs will
increase at roughly the same rate, once you ignore the
fixed-size runtime costs.

--
Bob Kitzberger	      Rational Software Corporation       rlk@rational.com
http://www.rational.com http://www.rational.com/pst/products/testmate.html