Compilers and Interpreters: Assignment P
January 15, 2004
Portability Considerations
Imagine you manage a small team of programmers for a contract software
house which has been invited to bid on several projects.
- Porting Mortal Kombat from the Xbox to the PlayStation 2.
- Porting a 2000 line payroll package, in Cobol and currently running on an
IBM 370, to run under Linux on a Pentium.
- Porting a web-browser minesweeper game, consisting of 800 lines of
Javascript, to run on a PalmOS PDA.
- Porting a 4000 line program for simulating airflow over a racing car from FORTRAN on a Sparc to C on a Pentium running Windows.
- ... to Fortran on a HP Alpha
- ... to Fortran on a high performance vector computer.
- Porting a 20,000 line word processor from C on a MacIntosh to C#
on Windows.
- Porting a 8000 line torpedo guidance system written in ADA from an
AN/UYK-44 to a Nintendo GameCube processor.
- Porting an 30,000 line e-commerce package for developing on-line
stores from C# on Microsoft software to Perl/PHP/Apache on Linux.
A. Which of these seems the hardest? why?
B. Which of these seems the easiest? why?
C. For any three of these projects, describe
- a. major activities, skills required for each, and an estimate of the time required for each
- b. tools that will need to be purchased or built
- c. major unknowns and issues that may make your answers to a and b inaccurate
- d. any potential problems that could hold up the project
Write a 1 or 2 page report covering A, B, and C.
Also come prepared to give a 3 minute presentation to the class
on one of your part C answers.
Estimated Time to Completion: 1-2 hours
Due next Tuesday at 3:01 pm.