From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,463c5796782db6d8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-04-11 00:35:21 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!uunet!lax.uu.net!sac.uu.net!ash.uu.net!lore.csc.com!baen1673807.greenlnk.net!baen1673807!not-for-mail From: "Phil Thornley" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: [Spark] Arrays of Strings Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 08:35:38 +0100 Organization: Computer Sciences Corporation Message-ID: <3e966fc9$1@baen1673807.greenlnk.net> References: <1ec946d1.0304090942.3106b4e4@posting.google.com> <1ec946d1.0304100609.52b0fac0@posting.google.com> <1049986095.779228@master.nyc.kbcfp.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 20.44.241.70 X-Trace: lore.csc.com 1050046517 20272 20.44.241.70 (11 Apr 2003 07:35:17 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.csc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 07:35:17 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: waec857.wa.bae.co.uk X-Original-Trace: 11 Apr 2003 08:33:29 +0100, waec857.wa.bae.co.uk Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:36079 Date: 2003-04-11T08:35:38+01:00 List-Id: "Hyman Rosen" wrote in message news:1049986095.779228@master.nyc.kbcfp.com... > Getting rid of features that are presumed to cause problems is a bit of > hubris that language designers always seem to fall victim to. Ada itself > had a huge problem because the designers thought that function pointers > could be eliminated. Spark gets rid of all pointers, Java gets rid of > templates, and so on and so on. > > Then everyone who uses these languages has to figure out how to work > around the lack of the feature they need, essentially duplicating it in > some kludgy way. [abuse snipped] There must be very few SPARK based systems that don't have to include some non-SPARK code. (One whole chapter of the SPARK book is about interfacing to such code.) But to argue that this makes languages such as SPARK wholly useless is specious. If I am writing the code for a safety-critical system then all of that code has to be brought to the same integrity level. If 99% of that is SPARK code then the effort to validate that code is minimised and I am quite content to put a lot of manual analysis (per line of code) into bringing the remaining 1% up to the same integrity level. Phil Thornley -- Phil Thornley BAE SYSTEMS