Re: "Bugs" (Was: Anyone could give a complete and yet small

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <32DA7CB4.456@lmtas.lmco.com>, Ken Garlington <GarlingtonKE@lmtas.lmco.com> writes:
> Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93 wrote:
>> 
>> Richard Riehle <rriehle@NUNIC.NU.EDU> writes:
>> >  Following on the proposition stated by Mr. Maggio, we may ask the
>> >  question, "Does all software contain mistakes?"
>> >
>>     Oh.. I don't know. It would seem to me that one could write a
>>     sufficiently small program which contained no "mistakes" -
>>     provided one was real careful about stating the requirements. Does
>>     anyone doubt that a "perfect" program could be written to satisfy
>>     the requirement: "Output the result of adding 2 and 2"?
> 
> Output - in what base? to what device? :)

Those are minor details.

I can show any program to be bug-free if you let me do the specification
after the fact, especially if I can continue to revise the specification.

At worst, if the program is inconsistent from run-to-run, I can specify
it as a pseudo-random number generator :-)

Larry Kilgallen