Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Tucker Taft <stt@averstar.com>]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> 
> Just_Curious <Just_Curious@my-deja.net> writes:
> 
> > What is the role of Your Language committee?
> 
> AFAIK, there is no Language committee.  The Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)
> is probably an institution which comes close (at least in function).

ISO has a working group (working group 9, "WG9") devoted
to the Ada language.  This is the "language committee"
in the official sense.  The ARG is a subgroup of WG9.
There are other "rapporteur" groups within WG9, for example
the ASIS-RG, which work on standards related to Ada.

The ARG focuses on the language standard itself.
The ARG makes recommendations to WG9.  WG9 is the
official body which takes the official country-by-country
votes on these recommendations.  They are then forwarded
to upper level ISO groups (JTC1, etc.) for further
even-more-official action.

> It handles defect reports for the ISO Ada standard and examines future
> directions of the language (for the next revision of the standard, see
> http://www.ada-auth.org/).
> 
> > Does Your Committees expand horizons and enlightens compiler
> > developers with their recommendations?
> 
> The compiler developers participate, of course.  After all, they're
> quite familiar with the language, so their input is appreciated.

All of our activities are quite open.  The ada-auth site
mentioned above is the best place to look for minutes,
technical reports, Ada Interpretations (AIs), etc.

> 
> > Do you think that compiler vendors and users themselves are not
> > able to maintain backward compatibility without such committees?
> 
> Wearing my Ada hat, I do not understand this question.  However, if I
> put it off and try my C hat, I can understand what you mean. :-/
> 
> Ada vendors usually don't derivate from the language standard in any
> significant way, that's why we have the standard. ;-)
> 
> Some vendors provide additional features, of course, some of them
> are even comparable and compatible, but these extensions don't
> play a major role, unlike the 'extensions' over the standard many
> C implementations provide (mainly adherence to mostly unwritten
> conventions).
> 
> In contrast to many other popular programming languages, there is a
> publicly available test suite for Ada implementations, and compiler
> vendors seek independent validation of their products against this
> test suite because it's quite difficult to sell a compiler which
> hasn't been validated on at least some platforms.  There's no market
> for proprietary Ada dialects at the moment, which is probably a good
> thing.

I agree with all of the above.  Note that there are test suites
for other languages which are publically available, but the
Ada test suite (officially called the "Ada Conformity
Assessment Test Suite" -- ACATS) has an official status
with respect to the ISO standardized Ada conformance 
testing process.  Also, the test suite is under continuous
maintenance by the ACAA (Ada Conformity Assessment Authority),
to ensure that it always reflects the latest rulings of
WG9.
 
> 
> > And in general, do you see some analogies between Language
> > Committees and other regulations in other areas of real life, on the
> > net etc ?
> 
> IMHO, a group like the ARG is necessary if you have such a complex
> technical specification like a programming language standard.  This is
> not a question of regulation, it's a technical necessity.

Although in the beginning, the Ada test suite was a royal
pain for implementors, it is now clear that to achieve
true standardization, a rigorous test suite that is
widely available is essential.  My own view is that part
of the failure of Java on the client was the inadequacy
and lack of easy availability of a rigorous test suite
for Java (especially for the GUI/AWT libraries).

Sun is still pretty stingy with their test suites, though
we are at least now seeing more visibility of "J2EE
certification."  This seems like one of the few test suites
that has achieved the level of visibility to the average
users that the Ada test suite has had in the Ada community.

> 
> > This is post in several language compiler newsgroups,
> 
> I'm answering to an article which was just posted to comp.lang.ada.

-- 
-Tucker Taft   stt@avercom.net   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) 
Burlington, MA  USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar:
http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html)