Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
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From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: Formal definitions (Re: ada-c++ productivity)
Message-ID: <RNMAX3C@xds13.ferranti.com>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
References: <27FB56D8.6176@tct.com> <p79Gyx1j1@cs.psu.edu> <1991Apr8.080931.23209@netcom.COM> <50097@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 91 16:55:41 GMT

In article <50097@nigel.ee.udel.edu> new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New) writes:
> You can also write programs which could not possibly be implemented in
> C, even by Dan Bernstein :-).  What more proof do you need?

This is as insane a claim as any of Dan's. If it's implementable in
principle it's implementable in C. It might take building another
language on top of C to make it convenient, but it's implementable.

> How do you know Ada's validation suite tests all the semantics of Ada?
> Do you want to build SDI based on "I think so"?

Is there an alternative? How do you specify hardware and human actions
based on a formal language specification?
-- 
Peter da Silva.  `-_-'  peter@ferranti.com
+1 713 274 5180.  'U`  "Have you hugged your wolf today?"
