Re: F-22 ADA Programming

[Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com>]

> It is not about escaping responsibility but come from the other end and try
> to be responsible. People are required to be diligent. Choosing the right
> platforms, languages, techniques etc. are all part of engineering just like
> choosing the right concrete, steel, and designs are are all part of making a
> bridge.

And yet, among hundreds of available materials and components, architects choose those that are most economically viable in the given context, not the ones that have the best known parameters. For every bridge or building I would be able to prove that better materials exist - and they were not chosen for valid reasons. Every single day my life depends on materials that were chosen based on some economic compromises and sometimes that economy argument is passed on us - for example we have to choose what car we will buy to drive our kids to school and that decision also involves economy compromises. I bet that nobody on this group bought the best car that was ever created. Should we feel bad about it?

I am not aware of any engineering industry where purely technical arguments are the only ones that are taken into account. It would be naive to expect that IT should be any different.

> I think that's misleading. It is not only the probability of failures that's
> important but their type and consequences.

That C++ bugs have more severe consequences than Ada bugs? :-)

> The question is whether people acted
> responsibly, cautiously, and in good faith. And those are things that make a
> difference in court.

And I assure you that no programmer in the world selects his tools in bad faith (at least I don't know any such wrongdoers). Everybody can swear on their good intentions. That should solve the court problem, right?

If I understand things correctly, lack of due diligence has to be proven in court. But who is responsible if most programmers are simply *not aware* of better tools? Nowadays the universities teach that the best language for everything is Java. Is the Java programmer liable for the broken system or should we sue his university instead?

-- 
Maciej Sobczak * http://www.inspirel.com