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From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shellx.best.com>
Subject: Re: Is ADA as good for graphics programming as C?  (WAS: Re: Avoiding
 the second historic mistake)
Date: 1997/07/08
Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.3.95.970708085156.24547A-100000@shellx.best.com>#1/1
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Newsgroups: 
 comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++
Date: 1997-07-08T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


On 7 Jul 1997, Donovan Baarda wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Jul 1997 15:11:35 -0700, Brian Rogoff <bpr@shellx.best.com> wrote:
> >No, the gcc backend is (was?) C specific, and other languages like Fortran
> >77 also require changes (in particular to handle aliased arrays). The
> >changes that make it into gcc are those which can do the greatest good for
> >the greatest number of languages.
> >
> As a matter of interest, were the extensions added to the gcc backend for
> Ada and Fortran merged and added to the gcc back end in general, or are
> they mantained seperately as language specific backends?

To the best of my knowledge, someone somewhere (MIT?) is modifying gcc/g77 
to handle Fortran better. Since Ada is very proper about who can point to 
what (aliased variables must be made explicit) the same optimizations will 
be applicable, while C and C++ require some sort of no-alias pragma for 
this.

> I also believe in using the best tool for the job, which means choosing
> the best language for the application. It is easy to fall into the trap
> of thinking that all you need is one language. Perhaps the root of all my
> complaints about Ada stem from the fact that it tried to be the one tool
> for everything.

I never thought of it this way. Coming from a scientific computing 
background, I'd say it is competing with C, C++, Fortran, and Eiffel but
not Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, or Macsyma (or Perl, or Icon, ...).

-- Brian