From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,649f10d4016c874d,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-13 15:54:44 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!freenix!enst.fr!not-for-mail From: "Alexandre E. Kopilovitch" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Problem space Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 02:53:30 +0400 (MSD) Organization: h w c employees, b f Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: marvin.enst.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: avanie.enst.fr 1052866426 11897 137.194.161.2 (13 May 2003 22:53:46 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@enst.fr NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 22:53:46 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org Return-Path: X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: comp.lang.ada mail to news gateway List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:37305 Date: 2003-05-14T02:53:30+04:00 Simon Wright wrote: >Can't help feeling that a problem that can be explained by source code >is going to be on the small side. Yes, but no-so-small problems aren't monolitic, each of them contains a number of small ones (it isn't original observation, I think -:) . And while a natural (human) language (note that it is not always English at all, and quite often it is poor English) is most suitable for general overviews and causal remarks, you can't cover all the details using the same natural language, unless you are exceptionally good technical writer. > And I don't fancy using source code to back up my design to customers. Surely. During a presentation your customers need not *deal* with the source code, they need not make immediate changes in it. >On the other hand, I remember a colleague who claimed that his VDM >spec was an excellent foundation for a customer review when annotated >with English! I see nothing surprising it that case. Good annotations in English should be the best thing for customer review. But: 1) that was about spec, not about implementation (including low-level specs); 2) what will remain from initially excellent annotations after several years of maintenance and many changes? It is well-known problem with detailed comments: even initially perfect comments eventually become poor or even inconsistent with the code after substantial period of maintenance. "Things are best at their beginnings". >... >There is nothing to prevent definition of a subset ('profile') that is >rigorously-enough defined to be translated. You can do that with a >small core of UML. For example, http://www.projtech.com/ Well, but with that customization you lose "U" in "UML". And after several such "rigorizations" of different but substantially overlapping subsets, what will you have? Do you think that you will still dealing with the UML rather then with some family of incompatible dialects? Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia