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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,6960ceaa57428e2f X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2000-11-19 18:50:07 PST Path: supernews.google.com!sn-xit-02!supernews.com!isdnet!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp2.deja.com!nnrp1.deja.com!not-for-mail From: Robert Dewar Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Another important feature of Ada Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2000 02:39:43 GMT Organization: Deja.com - Before you buy. Message-ID: <8va2tf$c9l$1@nnrp1.deja.com> References: <3A12041B.BCFD8CA0@worldnet.att.net> <8uu6tf$63d$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3A12BBC6.E3FDAB0F@averstar.com> <8v5dkm$ftt$1@wanadoo.fr> <8v78bm01p5t@drn.newsguy.com> <3A183756.485D5911@worldnet.att.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.232.38.240 X-Article-Creation-Date: Mon Nov 20 02:39:43 2000 GMT X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.61 [en] (OS/2; I) X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x60.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.240 X-MyDeja-Info: XMYDJUIDrobert_dewar Xref: supernews.google.com comp.lang.ada:2248 Date: 2000-11-20T02:39:43+00:00 List-Id: In article , Ray Blaak wrote: > It sounds good on paper, but in my experience almost all > interfaces need some modification after coding starts and > people can actually start using it. That's too pessimistic in the opposite direction. Whether interfaces can remain stable depends on several things: 1. The quality and effort of work to design the interfaces 2. How well defined the project is 3. How well organized the project is 4. Cohesiveness of the team doing the work Certainly I can give a counter example. In the mid 70's I did a real time operating system, PD/FMS for Incoterm/Honeywell. Itwas roughly similar to say the VxWorks kernel, with a complete set of tools (assemblers, linkers, file system including full indexed files, system utilities, editor, shells etc) to support program development. The entire system was approximately half a million lines of assembly language, including comments, and it was perhaps half comments. The way I proceeded was first to write the entire programmers reference manual for the kernel with full details of all callings sequences for thread scheduling etc, and the full users manual for the program development system. These manuals were edited into something very close to the final form in which they were delivered to customers, with discussion on details *before a single line of code was written*, and the only changes were very minor (mostly style editing) from then to the final release. The system was quite successful and was used in some 10,000 sites. My favorite note was from one person who some years later was forced to switch from PD/FMS to Unix, and was complaining that it seemed a big step backwards :-) Of course it helps to have a one person project, since it is easier to keep everything under control and organized, but I think this same discipline can be applied to many other projects. I would agree you can't achieve it with all projects, but it is a legitimate and reasonably goal, and it is giving up too easily to decide that it will fail in "almost all" cases. Robert Dewar Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.