Progress report of the Argonne National Laboratory's Nuclear Technology Programs, including R&D in three areas: applied physical chemistry, separation science and technology, and nuclear waste management.

This paper supplements the Proposed Standard for a Generic Package of Primitive Functions for Ada, '' written by the ISO- IEC/JTC1/SC22/WG9 (Ada) Numerics Rapporteur Group. Based on recommendations made jointly by the ACM SIGAda Numerics Working Group and the Ada-Europe Numerics Working Group, the proposed primitive functions standard is the second of several anticipated secondary standards to address the interrelated issues of portability, efficiency, and robustness of numerical software written in Ada. Its purpose, features, and developmental history are outlined in this commentary.

The only effective way to raise the confidence level of a program significantly is to give a convincing proof of its correctness. But one should not first make the program and then prove its correctness, because then the requirement of providing the proof would only increase the poor programmer's burden. On the contrary: the programmer should let correctness proof and program grow hand in hand.