From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 107f24,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid107f24,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-01 15:15:52 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!feed.textport.net!newsfeed.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp!sjc-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!iad-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!kilgallen From: Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.functional Subject: Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red Code distributed denial of service attack. Message-ID: <$Id63yuv4BjB@eisner.encompasserve.org> References: <5ee5b646.0108010949.5abab7fe@posting.google.com> <%CX97.14134$ar1.47393@www.newsranger.com> <9k9if8$rn3$1@elf.eng.bsdi.com> <9k9nci$1cq$1@nh.pace.co.uk> Organization: LJK Software Date: 1 Aug 2001 18:15:30 -0500 NNTP-Posting-Host: 216.44.122.34 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: iad-read.news.verio.net 996704133 216.44.122.34 (Wed, 01 Aug 2001 22:15:33 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2001 22:15:33 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:10995 comp.lang.c:71434 comp.lang.c++:79178 comp.lang.functional:7116 Date: 2001-08-01T18:15:30-05:00 List-Id: In article <9k9nci$1cq$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, "Marin David Condic" writes: > Well, that's rather assuming that there will be some constant level of bugs > in all software regardless of language of implementation. If on average the > number of bugs in a large body of applications written in Assembler, C, C++, > Ada and Zerble were constant in both quantity and quality, (just taking > different forms) then there wouldn't be much point in injecting any sort of > language checks to prevent bugs. This seems kind of obviously silly - checks > put into languages to find and prevent bugs do have some impact on the > overall number of bugs. (Granted, we're talking about statistical averages - > maybe the Ada code I write is really crappy in comparison to the C code you > write and so for a similar effort on our parts, you may have fewer bugs. But > that's hardly the point.) A minor point is that I cannot figure out whether Marin or Chris is the one more likely to write bug-free code. A major point is that neither can Microsoft. At a 50,000 foot level, it is better to equip the troops with tools that have safety guards on them. They may remove the guards from time to time, but that is better than for a giant corporation to pretend it is capable of only hiring people who are so skilled that they would never need a safety guard.