Re: Ada safety road Was: Which is right ...

["Vladimir Olensky" <vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com>]

Robert Dewar wrote in message <7jsdkf$v3p$1@nnrp1.deja.com>...
>In article <929128919.557.95@news.remarQ.com>,
>  "Vladimir Olensky" <vladimir_olensky@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> I was talking exactly about such kind of document (may be more
>> comprehensive though).
>
>I am really not sure how this document could be more
>comprehensive. Perhaps you miss the point, which is that
>it is VERY specifically aimed at safety critical programming
>in Ada, and is not for a moment a general style document.
>
>In fact safety-critical programming is a rather specialized
>area, so although I agree this document is very valuable,
>I am not quite sure I share your view of its universal
>applicability!
>


Please read more carefully other people posts prior to making claims that
someone has missed the point.
Many people have heard this more than once :-(
It seems that we have here one person who thinks that he never misses the
point :-)
Let's join the club :-)

As a matter of fact I was talking  "about such kind of document " that I had
in mind   when I did not know about N359.
To my  point of view this document (N359) is  extremely valuable and every
self-respected engineer who has something to do with Ada (or intends to do)
should have it at hand.
This document could be considered as general guidance for writing reliable
software in Ada (and not only in Ada).

Unfortunately N350 which is a draft of N359  has not been advertised across
Ada WEB sites so it seems that not too many Ada people were aware of it.
Otherwise I would get Markus Kuhn  response with reference to N359 from
someone else next after I mentioned about "such kind of document".

I could not  agree  that writing reliable software is specialized area.
Just contrary I think that this is universal area.

Remember how many people are complaining that something is unreliable for
example - Windows NT.
But a lot of people just forget that any OS should protect itself.  If some
application is doing something wrong WinNT just kills it (and no  problems
any more).
So complains should be about badly (or not very professional)  written
applications.
So much mentioned "blue dreaded screen" is usually cased (in 99.9%)  by
third party device drivers or services that have access to protected  OS
resources and are doing something wrong.
So writing reliable software is indeed universal area and this means that
person/team that is doing something  should know all things that can cause
unpredictable behavior (in Programming Language and used OS).
This also means that they should know as much as possible about how "not to
do" in order to provide reliability.
This is universal law as well.
In order not to make mistakes one should learn other's mistakes or summary
of such experience.
In real life this is of course a little bit  different . Some people  are
not even able to learn their own mistakes.



Regards,

Vladimir Olensky