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=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,99f33f51845a7793 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-11-19 07:20:23 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!sn-xit-02!sn-post-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: "Matthew Heaney" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: 'withing' problem Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 10:23:53 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <3be27344$0$227$ed9e5944@reading.news.pipex.net> <3BE42900.7590E899@adaworks.com> <3be65f4c$0$237$ed9e5944@reading.news.pipex.net> <3BF6E4DF.FA47ACDB@adaworks.com> X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4807.1700 X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:16685 Date: 2001-11-19T10:23:53-05:00 List-Id: "Simon Wright" wrote in message news:x7vd72gi0zm.fsf@smaug.pushface.org... > If there is a real-world circularity between doctor and patient, and > our software engineering tools can't cope with it, it's the tools that > have failed and not the real world! This reminds me of something I read on Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. When the platypus was discovered (it's a mammal that lays eggs), scientists concluded that it was a freak of nature! Pirsig/Phaedrus argued that that was a ridiculous reaction. Nature does whatever works, however odd humans may find that. That some animal doesn't neatly fit into a the taxonomy crafted by human observers is irrelevant. The issue here is that none of us agree what "failure" means. I am satisfied that the Doctor/Patient relationship can be modeled adequately. Yes, there is some syntactic baggage that is required, and there's an extra Tag_Check I'm not crazy about, but for me this gets the job done. John Volan argued that no solution was possible at all without a language change, and I argued that his argument was flawed (by providing a counterexample). Simon argued that my solution was inadequate, because there was no simple way to a automatically generate my code from the UML diagram. Who's right? The answer of course depends on the observer.