billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu (William Thomas Wolfe, 2847 ) (12/10/89)
From horst@pcsbst.UUCP (horst): > In the European Market we expect to have laws in 1992 that resemble the > American Laws of Product Responsibility. As far as I know, those can make > an implementor responsible for any consequences of using an implementation > language which is not considered the best choice. And there are strong > signals that Ada will be the default 'best choice' for lawyers. Is this > not true for the US? The US is going to be behind Europe in many ways once the European integration process has completed; the standardization of product regulations in Europe will be considerably greater than that which exists in the US, for example -- here there are still many different regulation systems which vary from state to state (example: insurance), and there is no real effort underway to eliminate all the inconsistencies. It will probably take a decade or so for the US to catch up, both in terms of using Ada and in terms of standardizing its marketplace. As for the product responsibility, I don't think the US lawyers have yet discovered this particular approach to demonstrating negligence. (Cross-posted to misc.legal for further discussion) Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu
xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) (12/30/89)
In article <7390@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes: >From horst@pcsbst.UUCP (horst): >> In the European Market we expect to have laws in 1992 that resemble the >> American Laws of Product Responsibility. As far as I know, those can make >> an implementor responsible for any consequences of using an implementation >> language which is not considered the best choice. And there are strong >> signals that Ada will be the default 'best choice' for lawyers. Is this >> not true for the US? > > The US is going to be behind Europe in many ways once the European > integration process has completed; the standardization of product > regulations in Europe will be considerably greater than that which > exists in the US, for example -- here there are still many different > regulation systems which vary from state to state (example: insurance), > and there is no real effort underway to eliminate all the inconsistencies. > > It will probably take a decade or so for the US to catch up, both in > terms of using Ada and in terms of standardizing its marketplace. As > for the product responsibility, I don't think the US lawyers have yet > discovered this particular approach to demonstrating negligence. > > (Cross-posted to misc.legal for further discussion) > > > Bill Wolfe, wtwolfe@hubcap.clemson.edu Granted that Ada is a marvelous language in its narrowly defined area of competence, I think any defense lawyer would have a field day poking holes in a language that has been frozen by a military bureaucracy; that ignores best current practice (full fledged OOP); whose semantics is so ill defined that most programmer users avoid most of the language most of the time, and most employers put lots of language features off limits; the implementation of one of whose main goals (concurrent programming support for embedded multiprocessor systems) is held up as a horrid example in language theory classes; whose syntax ignored established usage in favor of cuteness or uniqueness (read opaqueness); whose behavior is completely counter-intuitive, and on and on and on. And I _liked_ my chance to program fancy graph theory algorithms in Ada generics. Ada just has no business being pointed to as a standard of language excellence. It is too big, too awkward, shows its seams too prominently, and is _much_ too hard to teach, to learn, and to use. The "Dear Ada" column in Ada Letters is always an occassion for laughter and tears, but never for that warm feeling of satisfaction at seeing a job well done. Maybe if the Ada 0x committee develops a bit of gumption, Ada could be made useful without pain at some future date, but for now...nah. My opinions only, of course. Don't blame the folks who furnish the account. xanthian@well.sf.ca.us Kent, the (bionic) man from xanth, now available as a build-a-xanthian kit at better toy stores.