Re: A personal view of SigAda

[JeLlyFish.software@gmx.net (Vinzent Hoefler)]

rod.chapman@praxis-cs.co.uk (Rod Chapman) wrote:

Well, it was my first SIGAda and the reason I was there, were simply
just private interests... but I'll try to comment a little bit.

> Generally, a good SIGAda.  Much credit to all the SIGAda
> organising committee and program committee for such
> a well-run event.

Yes, this was my impression, too.

> I also gave a full-day SPARK tutorial.  Very tiring!

Oh, I liked it. You went through damn fast (it *is* a large topic for
one day), but I think I got most of the things... :)

> The keynote from Robert Carey of Livermore Labs was amazing - they
> are building a thing called the "National Ignition Facility" (NIF),
> which is basically one of the world's biggest lasers.

Oh yes, the figures looked very impressive...

> Oh, and when the shot fires, the whole thing is supposed
> to be synchronised to <20 _pico_seconds!  Now that's what I call
> hard real-time!

I still wonder how they will achieve that, especially on a relatively
large distributed system like this. I mean it basically requires more
accuracy than the CPU clock alone has...

> The keynote from Charles McKay was very good.

Uuhm, yes. It was exciting.

> Michael McEvilley did a good talk about the Common
> Criteria, security stuff, and why the Ada community has something
> to offer in the ComSec world (i.e. we know how to build really
> reliable software!)

Yes, I have the feeling that especially more and more security people
get interested into Ada (if they aren't already, of course). Not just
from this keynote, also by my own experience.

> Papers
> ------
> 
> Some good stuff.  Some stuff I missed.  Usual stuff from
> the vendors.  Two highlights for me were:

Well, the paper about the Generic Genetic Algorithm was interesting,
too. More in terms of teaching Software Engineering at University and
experience of the students with Ada than in the usual terms of the
mission- and safety critical area.

All in all, I enjoyed the SIGAda2002 conference. Lots of interesting
people. :)

Ok... I guess there could be a lot more to say, but I don't want to
bother the people in c.l.a. with my very personal view(s) too much.


Vinzent.