> On a mailing list concerned with another programming language (but not a > very well-known one*), the following comment appeared today: > > > If you want to see a really slow compiler I suggest > > you try using ADA (yuk!) if you haven't already. > > I suspect this may be based on not-very-current experience, and I would > like to provide some solid evidence that Ada compilers need not be slow. Starting with nothing compiled, on a project with over 17,000 source files (million-plus SLOC) .... On a Sun SPARCserver-1000, with one processor, and source files NFS mounted, and a fairly heavy load from other users (it's one of our main fileservers) ..... I ran a script that does gnatmake with optimization for 98 executables. Took about ten hours. Takes _MUCH_ less (but I don't have exact numbers) on a four-processor Ultra-2 with source on local disks. Apex speed on the same source is slower but comparable.