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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_DATE autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!harvard.harvard.edu!macrakis From: macrakis@HARVARD.HARVARD.EDU (Stavros Macrakis) Newsgroups: net.lang.ada Subject: Problems With DOD-STD-2167 Message-ID: <8510150247.AA03690@UCB-VAX> Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 13:05:39 EDT Article-I.D.: UCB-VAX.8510150247.AA03690 Posted: Mon Oct 14 13:05:39 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 16-Oct-85 05:09:25 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.ARPA Organization: The ARPA Internet List-Id: Agreed: Dod needs to do some work in making its software development standards reasonable. Agreed about functional decomposition vs. other approaches. I have never understood the structure of Dod software development standards, but I understand they are trying to incorporate prototyping and the like into at least one of these standards. 20.10 I believe this is intended to keep programmers from using the traditional method of making run-time executive calls. In the olden days (before Ada), real-time tasks typically were scheduled using such calls as call RepetitiveProcess(subroutine_name,time_interval) which would call the subroutine every so often. Note that the subroutine did not have a thread of control from one execution to the next, so all state information had to be kept in global variables. What 20.10 also appears to exclude, incorrectly, is the use of Ada tasks for coroutining (cf. Jackson -- but the technique goes back about 20 years before Jackson). As for Sadly, both DOD-STD-2167 and MIL-HDBK-287 treat Ada as "just another coding language with some 'advanced capabilities'" which must be mapped into the FORTRAN mindset. perhaps they are just being realistic. It is going to take many years of education (more than just training) to get old Fortran/Jovial/CMS-2 programmers into Ada-land. Isn't there some mechanism for commenting on 2167? -s