Re: What is wrong with Ada?

[<adaworks@sbcglobal.net>]

"Jean-Pierre Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message 
news:82dgve.spf.ln@hunter.axlog.fr...
>>
> Sorry, but I beg to disagree here. Conceptual bugs are found by reasonning on 
> the source, not with a debugger. Every now and then you may need to check the 
> value of a variable at some point in execution to validate or invalidate an 
> hypothesis, but even there, I find a proper trace message much faster and more 
> precise than using a debugger.
> -- 
I almost always agree with Jean-Pierre.  However, I do recall a project
in Ada written for a MIL-STD 1750A where the debugger was an
integral part of the verification (inspection) process.   Some may recall
the HP 65000 tool that was so useful in tracing, step by step, the execution
of a program while simultaneously presenting a human-readable version
of the underlying executable code.

This is an extreme example, and the criticality of the application was such
that this level of inspection was required for inspection.  It was certainly
tedious, would be unnecessary in most applications, but was probably
the correct decision in this situation.  And, "No"   I would not recommend
this approach to anyone for most software systems -- unless they are looking
for a guaranteed cure for insomnia.

Richard Riehle