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=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,66752102482bbdca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Required Metrics Date: 2000/05/06 Message-ID: <8f279n$me2$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 620098856 References: <5DDO4.2237$wb7.194854@news.flash.net> <8ek4ea$5ta$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <390DC8AD.59B5EBEE@averstar.com> <8ep0k3$jlr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8es5fv$4ov$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <_HnQ4.7884$wb7.550012@news.flash.net> <8eukm0$ssm$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <24VQ4.8453$wb7.646902@news.flash.net> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x42.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat May 06 22:45:13 2000 GMT X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 2000-05-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <24VQ4.8453$wb7.646902@news.flash.net>, "Ken Garlington" wrote: > By the way, while writing up a bug report, I found this in the gnatinfo.txt > file... > > "The Documentation for GNAT consists of two manuals, the GNAT User's Guide > and the GNAT Reference Manual. These are available in a number of formats > (ASCII, HTML, PostScript and info) and are bundled as a separate > documentation > distribution and can be found at the same places as the GNAT binary and > source distributions." > > ...and I just had to laugh! By the way, the documentation for GNAT very definitely includes the Ada Reference Manual -- but perhaps that's a surprise to Ken too ... hard to tell! This thread is quite instructive. I think the entire problem is that in the realm of software engineering, you define a set of "requirements", and then you can tell whether you have done a good job of implementing the software by seeing if it meets these requirements. It is, I guess, quite understandable, if quite wrong, for people to make the mistake of thinking that a language definition is like such a requirements document, and that you will be able to tell if a vendor has done a good job of writing an Ada compiler by seeing if it has met these requirements. That's quite wrong of course, the defining language document is not a set of requirements in this sense at all. Well more properly it is a small part of the requirements. Left out entirely are issues of performance, reliability, efficiency, usability, maintainability etc etc. By the way Ken, you questioned me saying that you were one of the people arguing for inclusion of these ill-defined requirements in the language. I may remember wrong, but I distinctly remember you arguing for this approach in the meetings we had on safety-critical requirements, and your previous post seems to confirm that memory (the one where you say that it was a waste of time attending that meeting). I sure hope that SOME people reading this thread come away with a little bit better understanding of what language definitions are all about (and also an understanding of why validation cannot guarantee usability or quality). Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.