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From: mjsilva697@earthlink.net (Mike Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Faulty languages and Liability
Date: 17 Jun 2002 12:00:33 -0700
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Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message news:<3D0DE5E2.5010904@mail.com>...

> ...it's design and specification and
> engineering errors that cause problems, not the choice of
> programming language, and I can do just as well with C++
> as I can with Ada.

So then you're asserting that choice of language has absolutely no
effect on software quality?  And you're also asserting that this is
the consensus opinion in the industry?

Coincidentally, from the currently-being-discussed Hoare paper of 1980
(discussing such security checking as array bounds checking):
"In any respectible branch of engineering, failure to observe such
elementary precautions would have long been against the law."

So, given the well-known falible nature of human programmers, if one
has the choice between well-known tools which perform many such checks
automatically, and tools which do not perform such checks
automatically, and if an organization then uses tools of the second
type which contribute to a major software failure, has due diligence
been used?

Here's another gem from the Hoare paper:
"An unreliable programming language generating unreliable programs
constitutes a far greater risk to our environment and to our society
than unsafe cars, toxic pesticides, or accidents at nuclear power
stations."

So I infer that Hoare, at least, does believe that choice of language
has an effect on software quality.

Mike