Re: Commercial C To Ada 95 compiler

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

Its just difficult to imagine a situation in which a C-to-Ada translator is
a *good* solution to any sort of reasonably long-term problem. As a
quick-and-dirty fix to a short term problem, maybe, but not if you have to
live with it for very long. Hence, not a lot of incentive to fund the
production of such a tool.

In some development environments I've been in, the management attitude
towards old code goes something like this: If the original developer of some
body of code quits, I declare that a "Legacy System" and no further
development/enhancement is done on it. The reason is that it is just too
expensive to get someone else up to speed on it and I'm better off starting
a "Version 2" development with whatever new requirements need to be met.
(The new system is cheaper than the old system plus new requirements.)

If I were confronted with some legacy C code someone wanted to leverage into
an Ada project through conversion, that would be my gut reaction - probably
it is cheaper to build it over again with *new* requirements that reflect
everything we want than it would be to translate the old stuff and keep
hammering on it to try to get whatever additional capabilities are needed.
But occasionally, there may be oddball cases. :-)

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


"SteveD" <nospam_steved94@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:kisM8.144693$ux5.185603@rwcrnsc51.ops.asp.att.net...
>
> I think you would agree that a C to Ada translator is technically
feasable.
> Whether or not anyone would want such a beast is another matter.  It is
> unlikely that anyone would fund such an effort but... stranger things have
> happened.
>