Computer Language Translation

[tkueny@nfsun.UUCP (Todd Kueny)]

Several years ago I founded a company called LEXEME which did
language translations from a variety of computer languages to
both C and Ada.  The company did okay but died for reasons unrelated
to the technology.  The technology was very effective.  For example:
There is an AN/UGC-144 terminal in Saudi Arabia running Ada which
we created.  We probably converted several million lines of code
over the course of 4 or 5 years; much is still in production.

Is this still a viable business area?  Are companies willing to
consider translation as a viable business alternative?

It seems that there is a lot of interest in Ada these days as well as
in translations.  It is interesting to note that there are a lot of
'translators' available which claim to convert FORTRAN and so forth to
C or Ada very easily.  These are often low in price.

I still believe that hard part of translation is not really the
conversion part, i.e., compiler-like technology can do everything
which is reasonably possible, but is instead the project planning and
execution.  The more difficult parts are moving the run-time, making
sure the Ada compiler does what you want, making sure task switches
happen fast, making sure that the source get frozen, knowing how to
test, etc.

I would like to hear any comments concerning translation that people
may have.  Only serious comments please, no flames about why its a
terrible thing to do; some of us have no choice.

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Todd R. Kueny			{ My opinions are my own. }
nfsun!tkueny@uunet.uu.net	105 Bevington Road
(412) 243-1630			Pittsburgh, PA  15221
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Todd R. Kueny			Intelligent Technology
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(412) 931-7600			Pittsburgh, PA  15219