Comparing ada and FORTRAN lines of code: Some experimental results

This paper presents the results of a study comparing pairs of functionally equivalent programs written in the FORTRAN and Ada languages. We found the Ada programs to require more lines of code than their functionally equivalent FORTRAN counterparts. However, we also observed that the overhead for Ada diminishes as program size increases. Our limited data suggested that there may be a cross-over point beyond which the size of an Ada program would be smaller than a functionally equivalent FORTRAN program. We explore some of the reasons for these economies of scale when using Ada. The implications of our findings on software cost estimating are also discussed.