tkueny@nfsun.UUCP (Todd Kueny) (02/27/91)
Several years ago I founded a company called LEXEME which did language translations from a variety of computer languages to both C and Ada. The company did okay but died for reasons unrelated to the technology. The technology was very effective. For example: There is an AN/UGC-144 terminal in Saudi Arabia running Ada which we created. We probably converted several million lines of code over the course of 4 or 5 years; much is still in production. Is this still a viable business area? Are companies willing to consider translation as a viable business alternative? It seems that there is a lot of interest in Ada these days as well as in translations. It is interesting to note that there are a lot of 'translators' available which claim to convert FORTRAN and so forth to C or Ada very easily. These are often low in price. I still believe that hard part of translation is not really the conversion part, i.e., compiler-like technology can do everything which is reasonably possible, but is instead the project planning and execution. The more difficult parts are moving the run-time, making sure the Ada compiler does what you want, making sure task switches happen fast, making sure that the source get frozen, knowing how to test, etc. I would like to hear any comments concerning translation that people may have. Only serious comments please, no flames about why its a terrible thing to do; some of us have no choice. ######################################################################## Todd R. Kueny { My opinions are my own. } nfsun!tkueny@uunet.uu.net 105 Bevington Road (412) 243-1630 Pittsburgh, PA 15221 -- ######################################################################## Todd R. Kueny Intelligent Technology nfsun!tkueny@uunet.uu.net 115 Evergreen Heights Drive (412) 931-7600 Pittsburgh, PA 15219
jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter) (03/01/91)
The problem is not translating a bad design in FORTRAN into a bad design in Ada--I'm sure that can be automated. The question is--is there any way to automate the translation of a bad design in FORTRAN into a good design in Ada? I doubt it. -- ***** DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own. Duh. Like you'd ever be able to find a company (or, for that matter, very many people) with opinions like mine. -- "When I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you."