🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <...> hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker) writes:

   If you are looking for a useful calculus then it might be a good idea to
   start by observing that both CSP and Z are already pretty complex
   systems. 

I disagree.  

The Z notation is simpler than any other formal method I can think of.

The theory of CSP isn't that difficult to understand. 

Didn't someone like Einstein say that a theory should be "as simple as
possible, but no simpler"?  What's the use of switching to an easier 
calculus or method if it's no longer adequate?

   Combining them is asking to produce something so mind boggling
   huge and vast that most people will move to something rather smaller of
   their own devising.

It's the "divising" part that's the complicated bit.  I'm (reasonably) happy
to rely upon the skills of aircraft engineers when I fly; I don't expect to
build my own plane.  And that's more complicated than booking a ticket and
flying.  It's a bit of a useless analogy, but I'm sure you get the point. 

Just because we had to think in metric spaces in order to check that the
language and models of CSP were all hunky dory, it doesn't mean that you need
to know anything more than basic set theory in order to use them.  I'm sure
that a similar argument applies to Z...

Jim




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