Re: Commercial C To Ada 95 compiler

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

Please read carefully what I'm saying. If one had a "clean slate" would one
deliberately choose to develop a whole new project in multiple languages?
Probably only rarely where you had some really unusual, specialized needs.
So by that point, any attempt to mix languages is a *compromise* with the
ideal situation and should be considered carefully.

Sure, if I have a PC-based, interactive user app where software failures
aren't life-or-death and the app will probably be toast in a year to
eighteen months when the next product cycle starts up and I've got some
large body of C code I can leverage, I might choose to mix Ada and C with
the Gnat compiler. If I've got an embedded military project that is going to
be around for 30 years and has life-or-death consequences, I'm going to be
much more eager to pick and choose my tools up front because the costs over
the life of the project are far more important. From that perspective,
re-engineering a large chunk of C code into Ada and then having to deal with
only *one* language is probably the wise choice because the up-front cost is
pretty small in comparison to the recurring costs of maintaining two
languages. Which gets us back to my original point - for large, long lived,
complex projects, those overall costs have to be looked at and if you *do*
want to compromise and mix languages, you'd best exercise all due diligence
to be sure it is the right decision.

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:jomN8.159965$cQ3.4608@sccrnsc01...
> "Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org> wrote > >
Some projects are small enough and simple enough that glomming onto some
> > chunk of useful C code and utilizing Gnat to compile both the C and Ada
> > might not present that big of a problem. However, for projects that
might
> be
> > long lived, large, complex, etc., you really would be inviting increased
> > costs and risks by going to multiple languages. I certainly wouldn't
> choose
> > to do it that way if I had a clean slate (would anyone?) so any attempt
to
> > do so is, IMHO, a compromise that needs to be justified carefully.
>
> Your projects must involve deeper pockets than ours.  We usually try to
> reuse as much code as possible... regardless of the language and rarely
have
> the opportunity to start with a "clean slate".
>