On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Ralph Hartley wrote:
> Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2001 13:58:32 -0500
> From: Ralph Hartley <hartley@aic.nrl.navy.mil>
> Reply-To: cavexml@cartography.ch
> To: cavexml@cartography.ch
> Cc: goodhill@xmission.com
> Subject: Re: Stations are primary + New Suggestion
>
> [...]
> > --- New Suggestion ------------------------------------------
> >
> > Back in the days when the US Military had lots of money for
> > software projects, there was a procedure that they used that
> > I think would be appropriate here.
> >
> > They would solicit differing proposals, and minimal (trivial)
> > implementations, and then have everyone comment on each of
> > the proposals suggested. (Including having everyone come up
> > with a paper giving the specifics of what they thought were
> > the points that they thought their implementation did better
> > than the others.
> >
> > Then a general vote was taken, and an effort was made to
> > bolt the good points of the losers onto the winner.
>
> And you consider this a model to be emulated?
Yes. I've seen it produce good results.
> Are you old enough to remember the genesis of ADA, when it was called
> Green?
Yes, I'm old enough. (I first started programming in 1968.)
I still have the Green manual at home.
> When Strawman and Tinman had nothing to do with the Wizard of Oz?
Yes. I remember this. I gather from your comments that you
expected otherwise.
> When the resulting language took more than five years to write the first
> working compiler? When the life was sucked out of a whole sub field of
> computer science, to the extent that it is only now recovering?
I flat out don't believe the "Five years" numbers, since I
was able to test some ADA programs the year after the spec
came out. Although I'll admit that not many people wanted
to pay for one
I don't agree with the rest of what you say. (And my web
pages contain Ada 95 code for a number of things... some
even validated by multiple national Governments.)
> I am.
So am I. And I like the results of the process.
But then I've had to do large projecets that are larger than
one person can keep totally in mind.
I've spent days sometimes tracking down bugs in C code that
could not have even happened if the code were in Ada.
> > I think that, for me, the time has come to stop arguing details
> > of what CaveXML should be like, and go off and flesh out a
> > version matching my ideas so that my ideas can be argued with
> > examples (and trivial implementations) rather than with
> > academic arguments.
>
> ...
>
> > It's time I (and other outspoken folk here) put my effort
> > where my mouth is.
>
> I was afraid someone was going to say that.
O.K.
> > I've already got some fast, numberically
> > stable code for network adjustements (In Ada 95), so I think
> > I can put together a working example on that end of the
> > world with a reasonable amount of work.
> If I find the time to do a pilot project, it would be a converter
> to/from an existing program. I have one already picked out. It's author
> has expressed negative interest in doing it himself.
Then it sounds like an excelent choice for a project.
> > Since the main discussion has ground down to just picking
> > at various points, rather than any radical changes, this
> > seems like the right time for us to go flesh out alternatives
> > so that people on the list will have as large a choice of ideas
> > to steal as is practical. (And, hopefully, we'll all notice
> > problems with our suggestions ourselves as we try conversions
> > on a few random datasets.)
> >
> > Ralph? Paul? You all with me on this approach?
> > In any case, I'll be going off and writing code...
>
> Just what I need, another demand on my time.
Isn't that always the moral responsibility of participation?
> I'll see what I can do.
> Ralph Hartley
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