From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,3869f0598191b11d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!local1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.comcast.com!news.comcast.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 17:48:02 -0500 Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:48:02 -0400 From: "Robert I. Eachus" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Porting ADA source References: <40FBBB16.8050206@noplace.com> <40fd03b4$1_1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net> <40FD0932.5080604@noplace.com> <40FE607F.6040702@noplace.com> In-Reply-To: <40FE607F.6040702@noplace.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.147.90.114 X-Trace: sv3-nYnwt7++KBdHJzME9miwtxgaJv+sMvgu3r6Hr3Kj7uMPlhi7H45HLB9WBGBfQR5rTbi9STSrcMlGNeY!fdEcCFJyE2fenatlBTlB/6so8pw/kz0h/ICTdiZcFNH9ib+h6tz0bKlOGc4Ycw== X-Complaints-To: abuse@comcast.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: dmca@comcast.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.1 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:2353 Date: 2004-07-22T18:48:02-04:00 List-Id: I said: > I'll second Randy on this first. Quick and dirty gets to "sort of > working" faster, but doing it right seems to get to working faster, > and definitely gets to no bugs much faster... > I think that the right path forward would be to migrate the code to > GNAT, then use the GNAT version on the Alpha system. It may be a lot > simpler than any other approach, and it certainly should reduce the > support costs going forward. > Marin David Condic replied: > Its all rather hypothetical, considering we don't really know what the > whole situation is. I naturally agree that if one builds a system and > thinks there is a potential need to port, one ought to design in the > portability from the start. (Isolate the dependencies at a low level). I > also would agree that if a system has a long and profitable future ahead > of it, one might be wise to look at a porting situation as an > opportunity to fix things that were not designed for portability (or > other structural problems that may exist). > > My observation would be that there is a large class of systems where > there might be some generally useful capabilities that someone wants to > preserve for some relatively small body of users and are therefore > porting them to more available hardware, but the systems just plain > aren't worth any significan effort to do it "right". Gold plating on > systems like this is mostly a waste of resources and I like to see ways > of avoiding building Brick Outhouses when this comes up. It happens far > more frequently than cases where there is some immensely valuable and > profitable tool that is worth investing some redesign effort in. I understand your concern and you will notice that I was suggesting what may be the 'cheapest' way to get to one version of the code on two systems. But the more fundamental disagreement is one I will persist in. I have only once regretted going to a more 'elegant' solution (and that was in a Simscript project quite a while ago). But it seems like every time I decide not to 'clean-up' the design I regret it during debugging. Often, you realize that the only reasonable way to fix a particular bug it to go back and do the restructuring. That is why I said that you may be able to get to "sort of working" faster with a 'quick and dirty' approach. But I've been doing this too long and have too good a memory (or too many bad memories) to ever make that mistake again. -- Robert I. Eachus "The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821