Gaétan Allaert
Gaétan Allaert holds an engineering degree in computer sciences from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. His thesis was about correcting codes, leading to his strong interest in discrete mathematics and software engineering. After an MSc in Aeronautics at Cranfield University (UK), he joined the software development team responsible for Air Traffic Flow Management at EuroControl. He continues to work in the development of safety critical systems in the same domain. He is currently working in the SPARK development team.
What does “Frontline Support” mean to you?
An accurate, correct and consistent understanding of the problem based only on the facts, shortly followed by a practical workaround and a definitive fix.
What drew you to SPARK/Ada?
I started to use Ada when I was working at EuroControl. I had never used Ada before but, when I was at university, I wrote large programs in Pascal. So, I was a “good candidate” to learn Ada. I found in Ada what I liked in Pascal: the excellent quality of the language that forces the developer to structure his thoughts before starting to write code. Later, when I understood how complex the impact of a small modification can be in large software, I was happy to discover that I was not alone in worrying about this issue. The SPARK language shows clearly how one piece of code can impact or is not linked at all with another piece. Moreover, I like the idea of proving properties instead of testing them for some specific inputs.
What’s your favorite feature of SPARK Pro Technology
My favorite feature of the SPARK Pro is that all the technologies are open source. It makes the SPARK Pro toolset not only great technology, but also a very good example of a large SPARK system.
