Re: Ada Book

[ichbiah@jdi.tiac.net (Jean D. Ichbiah)]

In article <3gh8t9$cak@cronkite.seas.gwu.edu> dobrien@seas.gwu.edu (David O'Brien) writes:

>[...]  In a way this was bad though.  I believe
>the language designers would have gotten a little insight by first
>implementing an Ada compiler before unleashing that job to others.  I
>may be wrong, but an Ada compiler can be *quite* hard to implement and
>wasn't that way it has taken so long to get good compilers (especially on
>small machines like the PC and Mac).

>-- David O'Brien        (dobrien@seas.gwu.edu)

Actually, my team had had experience developing an ancestor of Ada
(the language LIS) with essentially the same packaging, separate compilation
and representation features.

What  made compilation simpler  is the evolution of machines.  When we 
delivered our first PC compiler (in 1986) the average  machine had 1MB of 
memory so that we had to bundle a 4MB board with the compiler.  Four
years later, this  was no longer  necessary since, with the spread of
Windows, the smallest machine on the market  came  with the
needed 4MB.

Jean D. Ichbiah