Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!wugate!uunet!mcsun!ukc!strath-cs!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack From: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: call for discussion: comp.lang.specification Message-ID: <3660@midway.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Date: 26 Oct 89 17:27:48 GMT References: <3614@midway.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <33464@cornell.UUCP> <2356@stl.stc.co.uk> Reply-To: jack@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin) Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie, Unthank Lines: 43 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Keywords: "Steve Fagg" wrote: > I'm in favour of the creation of the group as described, but I'm more > concerned than the original poster about the ambiguity of the name > comp.lang.specification possibly implying discussion of the specification > of languages (a fascinating enough topic in its own right though it be). I concede on this one. I can think of something else wrong with it - these systems are more than just languages: Z, for example, incorporates a weak set theory, CCS a temporal logic, and OBJ a computational model that is halfway to being implemented in hardware. I suspect Peter Ladkin may have had something like that in mind. > I'd like to see it as comp.software-eng. as long as the > was general enough to include at least all the languages > mentioned in the original posting. I now incline towards "comp.specification", as being neutral on the issue of whether this stuff is mathematics or software engineering. I would hope to get people from both extremes participating - the theoreticians are hiding in clandestine mailing lists at the moment; they don't think of themselves as software engineers and aren't interested in filtering out the discussions that go on there about software metrics and management issues. And we've already heard from a software engineer who said he wouldn't ever have thought of using sci.logic for this. Think of this group as something like the table they put across the border fence in Korea when diplomats from North and South need to talk :-). > I hope such a group will be a useful forum for discussions on the relations > *between* the various languages available for specifying requirements and > systems, ie. questions of the sort: What language is good for doing > ? and How can I do in ? This was exactly the sort of question that prompted me to suggest this - for the life of me I couldn't think of an appropriate place to put it. -- Jack Campin * Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND. 041 339 8855 x6045 wk 041 556 1878 ho INTERNET: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk USENET: jack@glasgow.uucp JANET: jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs PLINGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack