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=1.2 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FROM_WORDY, INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,63ceef1cf4561e32 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Ken Garlington" Subject: Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope? Date: 2000/07/27 Message-ID: <10Lf5.2604$ck.263517@news.flash.net>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 651199723 References: <8l01s4$gnr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8l2pqo$im7$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3974F7A1.E806B092@silver.jhuapl.edu> <8ln7q5$t1o$2@news.btv.ibm.com> <397F442E.E132EFDF@silver.jhuapl.edu> <87puo0eg2m.fsf@deneb.enyo.de> X-Priority: 3 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 X-Complaints-To: abuse@flash.net X-Trace: news.flash.net 964656253 216.215.65.42 (Wed, 26 Jul 2000 19:04:13 CDT) Organization: FlashNet Communications, http://www.flash.net X-MSMail-Priority: Normal NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 19:04:13 CDT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-07-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: "Florian Weimer" wrote in message news:87puo0eg2m.fsf@deneb.enyo.de... > Scott Ingram writes: > > > A Google search on "therac 25" pops up about 1050 links. > > I guess you've omitted the quotes. If you enter them, the first hit is: > > http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Therac_1.html > > (A reprint of a IEEE Computer article, which is the canonical source > for information on the Therac 25 incident, I think.) Pfleeger in her text Software Engineering: Theory and Practice (1998) refers to this 1993 Leveson/Turner article as the "Definitive analysis of a famous software failure that resulted in loss of life." As far as I know, pretty much everyone else accepts this as the canonical description of the Therac-25 as well. > Fortunately, you cannot blame any higher-level computer language > for killing people, at least based on this incident. The offending > software was written in PDP-11 assembly language, according to: > > http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/Therac_25/Side_bar_1.html