Re: Sweden Fighter Crash

[pipex!sunic!celsiustech.se!bjkae@uunet.uu.net (Bjorn Kallberg)]

In article <26347@alice.att.com> somebody from somewhere wrote:

>
>Last week Bjarne Stroustrup posted something about the fighter
>that crashed in Sweden. Eventhough his main point was about
>the difficulty of comparing languages, and the traps that people
>fall into when they do so, there was some follow-ups about the
>crash as such.
>
>Somebody from Sweden expressed doubts about Bjarne knowing anything about
>what caused the failure, which Bjarne attributed to software.
>

Bjarne argued, that a single software bug should not be the base for
comparing languages. We all agree to that. Then he compared the ATT
failure, (where we all have seen the code lines that was the cause of
that bug) and compared it with the fighter crash, and attributed the 
crash a bug in the software, which he claimed to be written in Ada.

I pointed out, that this example was unfortunate, as

1: It was not written in Ada. (which I knew at that time)

2: That is was a bit premature to attribute the crash to a soft-
   ware bug. (At that time no reliable information was available
   to the reason for the crash)

>This just came in on the apnews
>
>	   STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) _ Sweden's new jet fighter crashed during
>an air show last week because of a computer flaw, an inquiry board
>said Wednesday in clearing the pilot of blame.
>	   Producers and military officials had been aware that vigorous
>movement of the control stick could cause the JAS 39 Gripen to go
>out of control because of computer overcompensation. But they
                           =========================

Do you call this a programming bug? 

>underestimated the problem, the government board said in a
>preliminary report.
>
>[ ... stuff deleted ... ]
>
>I'll just point out that Bjarne has a lot of contacts all over the world,
>and probably got a tip from friends in Sweden. 

Now that the preliminary reasons for the failure are clear, it seems
to be even more certain, that as an example of an Ada software failure
corresponding to the ATT software bug, this was not the best example.

>
>--- peter (peju@research.att.com)


Bj|rn K{llberg