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=-1.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, PLING_QUERY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9c6cb042c6c5955f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: marukka@delphi.com Subject: Re: Does Ada95 beat FORTRAN?!? Date: 1996/04/29 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 151982022 references: <00001a73+00002ce8@msn.com> <4lgcnf$mss@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) x-to: Thomas Koenig newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-04-29T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Thomas Koenig writes: >>I was interested in replacing a lot of old Fortran-77 code with Ada >>code. Does anyone feel that Ada95 is >>better than FORTRAN? I'd like to add my nickle's worth. But first, my qualifications: 18 years of scientific software developement for large DoD contractors. 15 years of FORTRAN, 10 years of Ada, and way too much Mil-Std 2167A. Enough of this. Depending on what your applications are, Ada may have advantages over FORTRAN. It also has disadvantages. Generally, FORTRAN compilers work well on all systems, but Ada development tends to be harder on Unix systems than on VAX/VMS. Don't be fooled by slogans. It is just as easy to write spaghetti code in Ada as in (I've seen many examples personally.) Also, when translating code into Ada, it is often tempting to over type. Too many user-defined types in a strongly typed language leads to innumerable headaches. Furthermore, if you try to translate FORTRAN-77 code into Ada, that's just what you'll get: code written in Ada. It won't be either pretty or efficient. You don't mention what platforms your code resides on. That could be an important factor. You also neglected to mention what kind of applications you are running. Anything that involves string processing, message routing, or the like is probably better off in Ada. If you are tracking satellites, processing radar images, or guessing weather, FORTRAN is probably the better choice (especially since, in the latter case, you will probably be using a high-performance computer like a Cray-90, a CM-5, or even an IBM-3090.) The high performance computers tend to like FORTRANs better than Ada. Mark Von Hendy Sr. Scientific Programmer/Analyst (but what's a job title anyway? :)