Re: Teaching new tricks to an old dog (C++ -->Ada)

["Jerry Coffin" <jcoffin@taeus.com>]

Randy Brukardt wrote:

[ the AJPO delegating testing authority before it was shut down ... ]

> I don't know whether it was done formally or not; I wasn't involved
> with that.

Such a thing was either one formally, or not at all.

> In any case, it is irrelevant to the existence of the ACAA, operated
> under the requirements of an ISO standard, for performing conformity
> assessment of Ada compilers. Or do you want to deny that I actually
> exist, that the ACAA and its websites, test suites, and authorized
> laboratories, exists?

The question is not one of existence. The original claim, however, was
one of their being "official" authorities. The claim that this testing
is somehow "officia" seems to be based on two claims: one, that the
AJPO delegated the authority before it was shut down, and 2) that to
some extent or other, you're acting as part of, under the saction of,
or are in some other way connected with the ISO (e.g. "Although the Ada
tool vendors finance it through the ARA, the ACAA's real boss is the
ISO" (from http://www.adaic.com/compilers/acaa.html).

At this point, it seems quite doubtful to me that the AJPO did any such
thing.

The ISO has this to say:

    ISO itself does not carry out conformity assessment. However,
    in partnership with IEC (International Electrotechnical
    Commission), ISO develops ISO/IEC guides and standards to be
    used by organizations which carry out conformity assessment
    activities. The voluntary criteria contained in these guides
    and standards represent an international consensus on what
    constitutes best practice.

(taken from:
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/aboutiso/introduction/index.html).

The bottom line seems to be that the ISO will take responsibility for
the fact that they wrote the standard you claim to follow -- but that
they disavow any and all other involvement with, or any more than the
most peripheral knowledge of you.

So, 1) one of the statements on your web site is probably outright
false, and another is saved from outright falsehood primarily by being
sufficiently vague as to only qualify as "misleading" 2) your claim
about my making a false statement was _probably_ itself false, and at
best certainly devoid of support 3) your statements about the quality
of an Ada compiler are no more "official" than mine or anybody else's.

The basic idea of an "official" verification process is that the
testing be done by a disinterested party -- one who gains _only_ by the
tests being accurate, NOT by them producing any particular result. What
we have here seems to be exactly the opposite: the Ada vendors have put
together a couple of puppet groups to give an illusion of there being
some distance between themselves and the testers, but in reality the
testers realize full well exactly where all their money comes from, and
at least some of them are even still directly associated with the very
Ada vendors they claim to be policing!

That isn't intended to imply, nor do I claim, that any of the testing
involved has ever been falsified or even mildly inaccurate. OTOH, it
throws considerable doubt on the claim that these tests should be
trusted because they're conducted by an "official" authority operating
with the ISO as its boss.

So, the question is not one of whether you exist -- but of whether you
and/or your testing should be trusted. In my view, your own posts have
thrown this into considerable doubt (at best).

--
    Later,
    Jerry.

The universe is a figment of its own imagination.