Re: Why would it take so long to write an Ada compiler?

[nma124@hotmail.com (steve_H)]

Mike <spamnotme@invalid.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.1865cca835f2ccee98991a@News.CIS.DFN.DE>...
> Hello,
> 
> I've read somewhere that to make an Ada95 compliant compiler, 50 years-man of 
> work are generally considered what is necessary.
> 
> How is this huge quantity of development time justified? Perhaps required for
> the standard library?

50 man-hrs (or should that be 50 person-hrs?) is nothing for a 
commerical compiler. 

Do you how many person-hrs was spend on the first IBM PLI compiler? 
I do not remember the exact number, but I remember reading that 
it was a huge effort and probably the most costly compiler ever made. 
any one knows?

compilers are hard. code generation and optimization is the hardest
part I would think. lex and yacc can do most of the front work. GNAT
does not use lex and yacc. 

Ada compilers are harder on average than others becuase the language 
is big, but I would guess an Ada compiler is no more
complex than a C++ compiler, and probably less so. C compilers are
probably the least hard to build.