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From: Brian Rogoff <bpr@shell5.ba.best.com>
Subject: Re: Depending on passing mechanism
Date: 1997/10/22
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971022155105.19886D-100000@shell5.ba.best.com>#1/1
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Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-10-22T00:00:00+00:00
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On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Robert A Duff wrote:
> Peter Hermann <ica2ph@alpha1.csv.ica.uni-stuttgart.de> wrote:
> >this thread has become very interesting due to
> >a couple of valuable contributions.
> >thank you all. You really have upvalued comp.lang.ada for a while.
> >I am wondering why the SPARK approach (J.Barnes)
> >has not been mentioned in this context.
> 
> I think it *was* mentioned.
> 
> The problem with SPARK is that it's such a *severe* subset of Ada.
> Sure, it solves the problem of by-copy vs by-ref parameters, and others,
> but it cuts out 90% of the language features.  So, although I think it's
> a fine idea for safety-critical apps, I think it cuts out too much for
> general-purpose apps.

Just to amplify, SPARK is roughly 

    Ada - {generics, exceptions, tasking, "use", access types, goto}
        + {various annotations}

and I agree with Bob Duff that it is missing too much for general purpose 
programming.

-- Brian