Re: SPARK : third example for Roesetta - reviewers welcome

["Yannick Duchêne (Hibou57)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

Le Mon, 16 Aug 2010 22:40:16 +0200, Peter C. Chapin <chapinp@acm.org> a  
écrit:
> In many respects SPARK is not like other languages.
Wonder if it is so (look likes a tool then).

> The nature of what
> it's trying to do is such that these extra supporting files are
> sometimes necessary. My feeling is that you should demonstrate
> reasonable SPARK style. If it is felt that user rules are appropriate in
> this case, then so be it. If the reader of the Rosetta site is put off
> by the extra complexity, perhaps they would be more interested in the
> Python examples. :)
That's not only about users of Rosetta which would be supposed not clever  
enough to understand it, that's about usability any one else (at least  
some ones else). You cannot make the assumption that if someone feel this  
is somewhat scattered, then this one is just not versed enough to  
understand how good it is.

What I wanted to underline is this:

1) Why to present SPARK as an annotated subset of Ada if it is not the way  
it is to be used ? (either all these documents about it should be revised  
or this point reviewed... the latter being unlikely to occur I feel).
2) If the user rule files are of a so big importance (Phil talked about  
tens of thousands of lines of Ada source with a single check annotation),  
so why to move them at the place where "builded" files belongs ? (just  
like if Ada package was to be put in the object/exe build directory). Is  
it the intended location of what is supposed to be a language source ?
3) User rules are written in another other totally different language. So  
a third unavoidable language comes into the place. This is not tiny affair.

Excuse me, but with due respect to you and Phil, I see no way to turn this  
into anything clear.

May be this is an effect of SPARK to few widely used (Ada being sadly  
already few than others, that's even more true with SPARK) which may have  
turned into the lack of some practical consideration. Sure these points  
are not there to help or to make people feel this is an Ada derived  
language with formal capabilities added. Why not promote Windows resource  
files as C derived language sources so ? And to present things one way,  
while this is another way, do you feel that is clear or (even honest) ?

« Je tombe des nues » as says a french expression.

For the time, unless some news comes in the place, I will end with this  
conclusion: SPARK's not a language, that's Praxis's tool. So why speak  
about it as a language, while a language is something which is clearly not  
use or managed this way as a tool ?

By the way, if this is really a Praxis's tool as I suppose now, do I have  
to understand there will be always one single implementation of SPARK and  
a single provider in this area ?

That is important too, and another difference with what a language is, how  
it is used and how it lives.


P.S. I have not updated the example unlike I said I will do today, because  
my mind is totally unclear about the topic now. Just you reply makes me  
think I had to tell my though. If you or Phil want to change it, feel free  
and just do. I probably will not before I will have a back-clear idea of  
all of this.

P.P.S Forgive for the hard intonation of my reply, this is just that SPARK  
is an important topic for me, the kind of thing I was dreaming about for  
long (from the start when I first discovered MS QBasic in Windows 3.1), so  
this trickery does not really make feel at rest.