From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,28cd155693714664 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-17 23:14:44 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: mjsilva697@earthlink.net (Mike Silva) Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Faulty languages and Liability Date: 17 Jun 2002 23:14:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <27085883.0206172214.1d28227e@posting.google.com> References: <3D0DE5E2.5010904@mail.com> <27085883.0206171100.7f6f0c5e@posting.google.com> <3D0E461A.8050207@mail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.179.212.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1024380884 14647 127.0.0.1 (18 Jun 2002 06:14:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 18 Jun 2002 06:14:44 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26209 Date: 2002-06-18T06:14:44+00:00 List-Id: Hyman Rosen wrote in message news:<3D0E461A.8050207@mail.com>... > Mike Silva wrote: > > So then you're asserting that choice of language has absolutely no > > effect on software quality? > > Not no effect, but not enough of an effect to justify requiring > under pain of lawsuit that one be used and that one not be used. Nobody is suggesting that. It is simply that (I repeat over and over) using known flawed tools at some point becomes professional negligence. It is in most other endeavors. Why do you resist this so strongly? > > > And you're also asserting that this is > > the consensus opinion in the industry? > > Nope. That's why so many places adopted Java. They just got > tired of the risks of using Unchecked_Deallocation in their > Ada code. Ah yes, I remember all those discussions about replacing Ada with Java well. :) > > > 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." > > I wonder why Ada compilers allow these checks to be turned off, then? Because (a) it may not matter, or (b) it may be provable that the checks are unneeded. You understand that not all risks are equal, nor all solutions identical, right? > > > 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 a falible programmer then uses tools of the > > second type which contribute to a major software failure, has due > > diligence been used? > > Perhaps not in hiring that programmer. The tools in question are not > equivalent in other aspects than safety, which is why the safe ones > are not always chosen. That's the cowboy approach to programming -- just don't write bad programs! The fact that it flies in the face of human nature, and that programmers continue to write buggy code year after year, seems never to sink in. This attitude is often mentioned when our industry is referred to as immature. Mike