Re: Bug rate and choice of programming language

[csampson@inetworld.net (Charles H. Sampson)]

Maciej Sobczak <see.my.homepage@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> ...
> 
> By following some links that were posted during the discussion on one
> of the Polish programming newsgroups I have found the following page:
> 
> http://www.leshatton.org/SCSS_595.html
> 
> This page seems to refer to some paper with an assessment of
> programming languages for safety critical systems with the conclusion
> that the choice of programming language has little impact on the
> resulting bug rate and what actually matters is the programmer's
> fluency in using it.
> Or this is at least what I understand from the paper's description.
> 
> ...

     Not really an answer to your question, but it gives me an opening
to relate a war story.

     20 or so years ago I was working on an Ada project with a young
programmer who was very fluent in C.  After he had worked on the project
for a year or so, someone asked which language he would use, Ada or C,
if the choice were entirely up to him.  He replied that he would only
use C if he were not concerned about debugging.

                        Charlie
-- 
All the world's a stage, and most 
of us are desperately unrehearsed.  Sean O'Casey