Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Florian Weimer]

Just_Curious <Just_Curious@my-deja.net> writes:

> What is the role of Your Language committee?

AFAIK, there is no Language committee.  The Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)
is probably an institution which comes close (at least in function).
It handles defect reports for the ISO Ada standard and examines future
directions of the language (for the next revision of the standard, see
http://www.ada-auth.org/).

> Does Your Committees expand horizons and enlightens compiler
> developers with their recommendations?

The compiler developers participate, of course.  After all, they're
quite familiar with the language, so their input is appreciated.

> Do you think that compiler vendors and users themselves are not
> able to maintain backward compatibility without such committees?

Wearing my Ada hat, I do not understand this question.  However, if I
put it off and try my C hat, I can understand what you mean. :-/

Ada vendors usually don't derivate from the language standard in any
significant way, that's why we have the standard. ;-)

Some vendors provide additional features, of course, some of them
are even comparable and compatible, but these extensions don't
play a major role, unlike the 'extensions' over the standard many
C implementations provide (mainly adherence to mostly unwritten
conventions).

In contrast to many other popular programming languages, there is a
publicly available test suite for Ada implementations, and compiler
vendors seek independent validation of their products against this
test suite because it's quite difficult to sell a compiler which
hasn't been validated on at least some platforms.  There's no market
for proprietary Ada dialects at the moment, which is probably a good
thing.

> And in general, do you see some analogies between Language
> Committees and other regulations in other areas of real life, on the
> net etc ?

IMHO, a group like the ARG is necessary if you have such a complex
technical specification like a programming language standard.  This is
not a question of regulation, it's a technical necessity.

> This is post in several language compiler newsgroups,

I'm answering to an article which was just posted to comp.lang.ada.

Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Marc A. Criley]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> 
> 
> In contrast to many other popular programming languages, there is a
> publicly available test suite for Ada implementations, and compiler
> vendors seek independent validation of their products against this
> test suite because it's quite difficult to sell a compiler which
> hasn't been validated on at least some platforms.  There's no market
> for proprietary Ada dialects at the moment, which is probably a good
> thing.

Actually there are language test suites for other popular languages and
a testing center available for performing formal certifications
(http://eds-conform.com/ValProdList.html).  EDS provides conformance
testing for Ada, C, C++, COBOL, Fortran, and SQL.

As Phil Brashear has periodically lamented, no one outside the Ada
community has undertaken a language conformance assessment.

Marc A. Criley
Senior Staff Engineer
Quadrus Corporation
www.quadruscorp.com

Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Florian Weimer]

"Marc A. Criley" <mcqada@earthlink.net> writes:

> Actually there are language test suites for other popular languages and
> a testing center available for performing formal certifications
> (http://eds-conform.com/ValProdList.html).  EDS provides conformance
> testing for Ada, C, C++, COBOL, Fortran, and SQL.

But popular language *implementations* have never been tested by such
testing centers. ;-) (Or maybe they have been tested, but the results
where too embarrassing to be published.)

Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Tucker Taft]

Florian Weimer wrote:
> 
> Just_Curious <Just_Curious@my-deja.net> writes:
> 
> > What is the role of Your Language committee?
> 
> AFAIK, there is no Language committee.  The Ada Rapporteur Group (ARG)
> is probably an institution which comes close (at least in function).

ISO has a working group (working group 9, "WG9") devoted
to the Ada language.  This is the "language committee"
in the official sense.  The ARG is a subgroup of WG9.
There are other "rapporteur" groups within WG9, for example
the ASIS-RG, which work on standards related to Ada.

The ARG focuses on the language standard itself.
The ARG makes recommendations to WG9.  WG9 is the
official body which takes the official country-by-country
votes on these recommendations.  They are then forwarded
to upper level ISO groups (JTC1, etc.) for further
even-more-official action.

> It handles defect reports for the ISO Ada standard and examines future
> directions of the language (for the next revision of the standard, see
> http://www.ada-auth.org/).
> 
> > Does Your Committees expand horizons and enlightens compiler
> > developers with their recommendations?
> 
> The compiler developers participate, of course.  After all, they're
> quite familiar with the language, so their input is appreciated.

All of our activities are quite open.  The ada-auth site
mentioned above is the best place to look for minutes,
technical reports, Ada Interpretations (AIs), etc.

> 
> > Do you think that compiler vendors and users themselves are not
> > able to maintain backward compatibility without such committees?
> 
> Wearing my Ada hat, I do not understand this question.  However, if I
> put it off and try my C hat, I can understand what you mean. :-/
> 
> Ada vendors usually don't derivate from the language standard in any
> significant way, that's why we have the standard. ;-)
> 
> Some vendors provide additional features, of course, some of them
> are even comparable and compatible, but these extensions don't
> play a major role, unlike the 'extensions' over the standard many
> C implementations provide (mainly adherence to mostly unwritten
> conventions).
> 
> In contrast to many other popular programming languages, there is a
> publicly available test suite for Ada implementations, and compiler
> vendors seek independent validation of their products against this
> test suite because it's quite difficult to sell a compiler which
> hasn't been validated on at least some platforms.  There's no market
> for proprietary Ada dialects at the moment, which is probably a good
> thing.

I agree with all of the above.  Note that there are test suites
for other languages which are publically available, but the
Ada test suite (officially called the "Ada Conformity
Assessment Test Suite" -- ACATS) has an official status
with respect to the ISO standardized Ada conformance 
testing process.  Also, the test suite is under continuous
maintenance by the ACAA (Ada Conformity Assessment Authority),
to ensure that it always reflects the latest rulings of
WG9.
 
> 
> > And in general, do you see some analogies between Language
> > Committees and other regulations in other areas of real life, on the
> > net etc ?
> 
> IMHO, a group like the ARG is necessary if you have such a complex
> technical specification like a programming language standard.  This is
> not a question of regulation, it's a technical necessity.

Although in the beginning, the Ada test suite was a royal
pain for implementors, it is now clear that to achieve
true standardization, a rigorous test suite that is
widely available is essential.  My own view is that part
of the failure of Java on the client was the inadequacy
and lack of easy availability of a rigorous test suite
for Java (especially for the GUI/AWT libraries).

Sun is still pretty stingy with their test suites, though
we are at least now seeing more visibility of "J2EE
certification."  This seems like one of the few test suites
that has achieved the level of visibility to the average
users that the Ada test suite has had in the Ada community.

> 
> > This is post in several language compiler newsgroups,
> 
> I'm answering to an article which was just posted to comp.lang.ada.

-- 
-Tucker Taft   stt@avercom.net   http://www.averstar.com/~stt/
Chief Technology Officer, AverCom Corporation (A Titan Company) 
Burlington, MA  USA (AverCom was formerly the Commercial Division of AverStar:
http://www.averstar.com/services/ebusiness_applications.html)

Re: Do you have Standards Committee in your language?

[Marin David Condic]

This does not appear on my newsreader to be posted to any other groups
besides Comp.Lang.Ada. Were you figuring on independently checking all of
the language groups for followups? Or is it a problem with my newsreader?

Since Ada is one of the few OO languages out there with an ISO standard and
test suite and a history of standard-adherence among compiler vendors, it
would be interesting to see how other languages stack up against it. Other
languages have standards, to be sure, but divergence from the standards
seems to be more the rule than the exception. In this respect, Ada has done
famously well - if one considers standard-adherence to be a good thing.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Just_Curious" <Just_Curious@my-deja.net> wrote in message
news:3B0AF1F6.BDE29DF3@my-deja.net...
> All,
>
> Thinking about role of Standards Committee in my favorite
> language (Fortran) I decided to hear advice from folks in other
> languages first.
>
> What is the role of Your Language committee?
>
> Does Your Committees expand horizons and enlightens compiler
> developers with their recommendations? Or opposite,
> not being creative, they are working like brake for language
> development and experimenting and eventually are bad for
> users?
>
> Do you think that compiler vendors and users themselves are not
> able to maintain backward compatibility without such committees?
>
> And in general, do you see some analogies between Language Committees
> and other regulations in other areas of real life, on the net etc ?
>
> I think these questions are of common interest.
> This is post in several language compiler newsgroups,
> hence please mention your language unless you specially
> don't want this. You may find responds on other languages
> searching Deja with subject as above.
>
> cheers
>
>
>