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From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: An Ada Advice Inquiry
Date: Tue, 08 May 2007 11:53:54 -0400
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
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Date: 2007-05-08T11:53:54-04:00
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Justin Gombos <rpbkbq.xax.gld@uluv.kbq> writes:

> On 2007-05-07, Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The new Ada standart is only 2 month old.
>>
>> Sure. Then - let's see how the situation will look like 2 months
>> after stamping the next C++ standard, OK?
>
> An Ada implementation is considerably more complex.  It takes one man
> year to produce a C++ compiler, vs ten man years to produce an Ada
> compiler.  

Your estimate for Ada might be in the right ballpark, depending on
level of optimization, number of targets, peripheral tools such
as debuggers and profilers, knowledge of the development team,
etc.  I could probably build a very minimal Ada compiler from
scratch in 5 person years, given a good team.

But your estimate for C++ is way off.  C++ compilers are approximately
the same difficulty as Ada compilers.  I'd say C++ is slightly more
difficult, but I'm not sure about that.

Anyway, we were talking about implementing language revisions,
not entire compilers.  The GNAT implementation of Ada 2005
(which is complete, by the way) was a substantial effort,
but nowhere near 10 person years.  (Of course we started
working on it before the standard was official.)

- Bob