Re: Ada to C Translator

["Frode Tennebø" <frodet@nvg.org>]

Dave Ptacek wrote:

> An interesting viewpoint.  While I been using Ada for the better share
> of 13 years, and do see several benefits when comparing it to C/C++,
> I'm currently in a project that is considering the porting of approx.
> 100k Ada sloc to C++.
> 
> Over the years (15), this particular application became very domain
> specific, was designed to run on DOS (real mode and later protected
> mode),
> and is now heading to WinNT 4.0.  Try finding people with Ada,
> assembler, DOS, Windows, MFC, various communication buses, an
> appreciation for creating test applications for factory test and
> lastly willing to re-locate to a
> "small" midwestern town.  We usually end up training inexperienced
> people and hope they will stay.
> 
> Not that Ada is the limiting factor in all of this, but most new
> college grads will have a C/C++ background and realize that Windows
> programming in
> C/C++ looks pretty good on a resume.

True, C++ was very hot in college a few years back. However, my bet is 
that C/C++ is not very common for new college grads these days. Java is 
probably the most tought language today, with Visual Basic as a good 
contender (I don't have any hard numbers - if someone have, please 
arrest me). Tomorrow it will most likely be C# or something else.

I'm not sure what type of application you have, however 15 years ago 
there were a lot fewer languages than today. C++ was not even thought 
of. How many of those languages are alive today? Can you get an 
actively maintained compiler for Cobol on a modern platform? What about 
Forth? The only laguage I can think of other than Ada and C which has a 
active compiler support is Fortran - even Pascal is struggeling.

My point is that with Ada, you will most likely get a maintained 
compiler for a current platform in 15 years. Will this be true for C++?

Also, you are switching to NT 4 NOW? NT has already reached EOL.  If 
you had written any legacy application with C++ on Windows 3.11 five 
years ago - how easy would it be to port it to any platform today? How 
about in 10 years?

>  Throw in the integrated
> programming environment (Visual Studio) and several educational houses
> providing immediate Windows training programs (Learning Tree), the
> idea of porting the
> source code from Ada to C/C++ becomes an attractive option.  Is it
> technically the best design choice?  For this particular application
> mentioned above, probably due to the OS choice and development
> toolsets available, but I certainly wouldn't make a general statement
> that it's the best choice for every situation.

Again, without the knowledge of your system I don't have all the 
answers. However, I would get your application running on an older 
version of GNAT for DOS (if you don't require later versions' added 
bonuses) and then port it to most operating sytem of your choice. 
Depending on the cost structure of your system, a W2K license can be 
significant compared to eg. Linux or BSD or even Solaris these days.

I performed the major part of 'porting' a 200K SLOC (sic) of code from 
SunAda 3 running on Solaris 2.5.1 to GNAT on Solaris 8 in less than 200 
hours. Appart from some socket code I have identified, I'm pretty 
confident that everything will compile on Linux without changes when we 
get there.

 -Frode

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