Re: Ada9x Transition Plan (443 lines) ftp-ed from AJPO

[jls@rutabaga.Rational.COM (Jim Showalter)]

>      3.2  FREE EDUCATIONAL ADA 9X COMPILATION SYSTEM
>
>      Since this system is for educational purposes only,  and 
>      there is no intent to compete with industry but rather to  stimu-
>      late the market, it may be that certain features of the  language 
>      are  not  supported;

Bad idea, bad precedent. One of the great selling points of Ada over
any other language is that it IS a standard. Introducing dialects,
ESPECIALLY in an educational system, is regressive. Either teach Ada
or don't teach Ada, but by all means don't teach "sort-of" Ada.

>      The  original testing philosophy was to expose  compiler  errors, 

Seems like a good idea. Why depart from this philosophy now? If it
aint broken, don't fix it.

>      whether or not an error was likely to be encountered by users  or 
>      would  have been considered a significant defect by  programmers.  
>      The new, usage-based testing philosophy is to focus on  potential 
>      non-conformities  that  would impair the actual use of  the  lan-
>      guage.

How does one guess ahead of time which particular compiler bugs will
be "significant" in the eyes of a programmer? Personally, I view ALL
bugs as an evil thing that must be stamped out. I would not like having
to choose which bugs I wanted to live with and which bugs I wanted fixed.
I want them ALL fixed. That's the whole POINT of validation.

>      Furthermore, continued  growth of the ACVC test  suite  will  be 
>      prohibited.

WHY? Why set an artificial ceiling on the number of tests? The number
of tests should be exactly equal to the number required to ensure
validation, no more, no less. This seems elementary--who is pushing
to limit the number of tests?

>      Tests  may be modified/added/deleted  but  a  fixed 
>      ceiling of approximately 3800 tests (187,000 LOC) will be  estab-
>      lished.

While this might be a great idea for laws, it stinks for testing
compilers. If you are limited to 3800 tests and there are 3801
things that can be wrong with a compiler, you are guaranteeing
that one bug will be visited upon all Ada users.

>      The  increased  focus on usage and the prohibition  of  continued 
>      growth  is expected to provide vendors with more time to  concen-
>      trate on meeting users special requirements for optimization  and 
>      high quality tools.

I would rephrase this to read "The prohibition of continued growth
[of the tests] is expected to provide vendors with a shortcut to
achieving validation at the expense of the Ada user community".
--
***** DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed herein are my own. Duh. Like you'd
ever be able to find a company (or, for that matter, very many people) with
opinions like mine. 
              -- "When I want your opinion, I'll read it in your entrails."