johnl@ima.UUCP (03/30/88)
3 man months to write a Pascal compiler? Well maybe that for
a talented programmer to write a *student* compiler, but the difference
between that and a tested, documented, somewhat extended real-work
compiler is immense.
Of course the difference in time between what's required to hack something
together and what's required to make a product is always more than people
think. That's why real products are always late.
So I would say a man-year, at least.
---
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
[From watmath!looking!brad (Brad Templeton)]
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mail accidentally sent back to compilers. Meta-mail to ima!compilers-requestdjones@riacs.EDU (Dave Jones) (03/30/88)
Hey there.
Let's hear your guestimates. How many man-months of effort can we
say should go into the construction of a new Pascal compiler? Assume
that you have C and Yacc or some such, but not much else. What kind
of numbers can you say?
Dave Jones, Megatest Corp., 880 Fox Lane, San Jose, CA. 95131
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[I wrote a Fortran compiler and library that was pretty complete but didn't do
any optimization; it took a year and a half working about one day a week.
Smart undergraduates write Pascal compilers as term projects, so I'd say that
if you can't get one going in three months or so, you're not trying very hard.
This assumes, of course, that you have a reasonable environment with an
assembler and linker and such. It also assumes that you're not planning to
make enormous extensions nor do lots of extremely advanced optimizations. But
I really have to ask, why does the world need another Pascal compiler? -John]
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