Re: "Ada and C++", from comp.software-eng

[neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Ulrich Neeracher)]

In article <5148@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>, abdlm@dftsrv.gsfc.nasa.gov writes:
>Wasn't this the system (or one similar to it) that took out the whole east 
>coast of the U.S. with a pointer bug last year. Chalk up another victory for
>the power of pointers and C++. With so much of the world economy riding on
>the telecomunications networks, wouldn't it make sense to build these 
>systems with tools (read languages) that were designed for reals time systems.

Are you implying that Ada programs are absolutely bug-free ? It seems to
me that these telecommunications applications have quite few failures.

>Any cost sagings AT&T realized by using their in house language (C++,C) which 
>might or might not be faster than Ada were probably lost in the first few hours 
>of the service outage. That was an expensive lesson.

So what exactly was the lesson ? That real systems, as opposed to their
specifications and their vaporware counterparts, sometimes fail ?

>-D. Miller, Goddard robotics Laboratory.

Matthias

-- 
Matthias Neeracher                                      neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can 
    even aspire to crudeness." -- William Gibson, _Johnny Mnemonic_