Re: Ada Compilers

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

Not entirely fair. It is perfectly fair to ask about the quality of code
generation for specific language implementations. Efficiency is a reasonable
concern - sometimes a *critical* concern such as when dealing with hard
realtime constraints.

The best answer is that there are very good, highly optimizing Ada compilers
that can produce code every bit as tight as the best C/C++ compilers for
similar programs. The caveat is that you can *only* talk about specific
compilers and targets - not about the language in general. For example, (as
observed elsewhere) the GNAT compiler and the GCC C/C++ compilers share the
same back end & generate pretty much identical code for identical programs
of different languages. Is GCC a "good" compiler for the x86 PC? Most people
think so. Hence, GNAT is going to be just as efficient - sometimes even
moreso - than C or C++ going through the GCC compiler. Are there *better*
compilers out there than GCC/GNAT? Maybe - for a given platform - and for
given algorithms/applications - and some of them will compile Ada while
other compile C or C++ or Fortran or who knows what. If efficiency is a
critical concern, the only hope is to conduct timing studies comparing
different implementations for the problems at hand. If efficiency is just a
casual concern, then rest asured that there are implementations of Ada that
are Good Enough.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Preben Randhol" <randhol+abuse@pvv.org> wrote in message
news:slrnae79li.oe.randhol+abuse@kiuk0156.chembio.ntnu.no...
> On Thu, 16 May 2002 13:25:22 +0200, David Rasmussen wrote:
> >
> > I mean how good is the generated machine code on various CPU's (x86 for
> > instance) with typical Ada compilers as compared with typical C++
compilers?
> >
>
> Why? The important question is how good is the quality of the software
> produced with Ada compared to C++.
>