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Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 12:13:49 -0400
From: Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
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Subject: Re: Thought this was interesting
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Date: 2002-08-27T12:13:49-04:00
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Marin D. Condic wrote:
 > Most software is driven by time to market and low-cost provider issues.
 > It operates against the "Good/Fast/Cheap - pick two!" problem and "Good"
 > is the loser.

There is also the problem of having to develop against
unstable underpinnings. Many programs run in cooperation
with system software which is itself underspecified,
unstable, and buggy. In such a world, even when you do
the best you can, it may still not be enough to produce
"good" software.

Apropos of this, if you have access to a Windows system,
try running the following simple program there. Make sure
to save all important work first! It just prints out a
string over and over again. It couldn't do anything bad,
could it? Especially not on WinNT or WIn2K, right?
Especially if you have no special privileges, right? :-)

with text_io; use text_io;
with ada.characters.latin_1; use ada.characters.latin_1;
procedure crash is
begin
   loop
     put("Hung up!" & HT & BS & BS & BS & BS & BS & BS);
   end loop;
end;