eberard@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu (Edward Berard) (04/15/88)
I am sponsoring an Ada programming contest (cash prizes totaling
US$7500). The winning entries in this contest will be placed in the
public domain. (The title of the contest is "Ada Can.")
The first part of this contest requires that I solicit "interesting,
unsolvable" Ada problems. The closing date for submission of such
problems is very near (April 22, 1988), and I am sure that I could use
some more potential problems.
The characteristics of "interesting, unsolvable" Ada programming
problems are:
1. They must not appear to be readily solvable using "simple"
features found in the LRM (ANSI/MIL STD 1815A (1983)). For
example, assigning a fixed priority to an Ada task can be easily
accomplished using pragma Priority. Assigning a dynamic priority
to a task, on the other hand, does not appear to have a simple
solution.
2. There must exist few (if any) known satisfactory solutions to
the problem which are legal under the syntax and semantics
described in the LRM. If any solutions exist, they must be
cited, and reasons given as to why they are unsatisfactory.
3. They must not be problems which can be solved solely by:
changing things outside of the language (e.g., hardware and
run-time environments), improved implementations of validated
compilers, or special interpretations of known language
ambiguities. An example of an unacceptable problem would be
"having a task rendezvous complete in less than 200
microseconds."
4. The problem must be interesting. I am looking for problems whose
solutions will have a significant impact on Ada applications in
general.
I am looking for at least 10 (ten) such problems. Please send your
ideas for problems directly to me to avoid "net clutter." I will post
both the contest problems and more contest information at a later
date.
-- Ed Berard
EVB Software Engineering, Inc.
5320 Spectrum Drive
Frederick, Maryland 21701
Phone: (301) 695-6960
eberard@ajpo.sei.cmu.edu