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=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_20,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 101deb,87f6968ed41c9df1 X-Google-Attributes: gid101deb,public From: Sandy McPherson Subject: Re: Multiple reasons for failure of Ariane 5 (was: Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception?) Date: 1996/09/06 Message-ID: <323045FE.1023@wgs.estec.esa.nl>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 178886700 references: <4vjv1e$8c6@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <4vrmtp$s80@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <3222E875.2E54@lmtas.lmco.com> <505pto$bmr@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <322D412D.42DF@lmtas.lmco.com> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: European Space Agency mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1 x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.4 sun4) Date: 1996-09-06T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dear Ken and Robin, Can't you guys get your own newsgroup, use email, the phone, or get married or something. I used to be amused by your sometimes ungrounded mutual accusations, however it is wearing a bit thin now. The Ariane 5 incident will go down Space Industry in history as the most spectacular software failure so far. The reasons behind it are manifold, but I can't remember the last time this thread mentioned Ariane 5. I tended to think Robin was taking part in that well known (at least to British, Aussies Kiwis etc.) activity of mug-baiting: you make an outrageous statement wait for someone to take it seriously and then have a good laugh watching them get wound up. However I'm not sure anymore. If this is a real discussion, I think it is quite clear that neither of you is going to win. I don't think there has been one scrap of evidence to support Robin's claims for divine superiority of homo PLIs, how can a NEW PL/I programmer be any better than a NEW Ada programmer, does he download experience from the manual? If Robin's point is reduced purely to experience in the industry, then the the language become less important as the number of years experience increases. Most people don't core dump and forget their previous experience when they are required to use a new language. Unfortunately there aren't many programmers around with 30+years of experience in any (programming?) language, who actually work at the "coal face", so we will never know if the 50+ PL/I guys would have done a better job than the 50+ Ada guys, but I think we could prove that the 50+PL/Iers would do a better job than the usual bunch of 25-30 year olds who generally do the coding (and whose main ambition is to stop coding as soon as possible, take up a management post and be able to make the decisions which make the headllines). I am not in a position to judge if the exception handling in PL/I is better than that in Ada, I do object to this statement though: ++robin says: ---On the contrary, they do, because they have had more experience in using the exception capabilities on a daily basis, not just in dedicated real-time systems. The very first Ada I wrote more than 8 years ago used the exception capabilities and I have used it regularly since (but not on a daily basis), I have also never used Ada in an embedded system, only on big clunky machines with big clunky operating systems. There are certain (non)features of Ada which had me pulling my hair out, but these seem to have been fixed by Ada95- the exception handling wasn't one of them. The only PL/I program I have seen was such a pile of garbage, (it was more then 5000 lines long with no indentation no comments and no sub-programs), it was an operational analysis tool which happened to prove the invincibility of the air force, because the random number generator was broken. Not even the cleverest of exception handling capabilities would have been able to rescue pilots from the mess this thing would have gotten them into. This does not lead me however to the conclusion that PL/I is crap. IMO it is complete nonsense to trash Ada (or any other language, including PL/I), simply because people make stupid management/ design/ coding decisions, because we would quickly have no languages left to use!! It takes two to cause an argument, but only one to step out and stop it. Would one of you please come to your senses and spare the rest of us. Sandy