Re: Ariane 5 failure

[Byron Kauffman <KauffmanBB@lmtas.lmco.com>]

Michel OLAGNON wrote:
> 
> May be the main reason for the lack of testing and care was
> that the conversion exception could only occur after lift off,
> and that that particular piece of program was of no use after
> lift off. It was only kept running for 50 s in order to
> speed up countdown restart in case of an interruption between
> H0-9 and H0-5.
> 
> Conclusion: Never compute values that are of no use when you can
> avoid it !
> 
> >There's a case for a review of the programming language used.
> 
> Michel
> --
> | Michel OLAGNON                       email : Michel.Olagnon@ifremer.fr|
> | IFREMER: Institut Francais de Recherches pour l'Exploitation de la Mer|

Of course, Michel, you've got a great point, but let me give you some
advice,
assuming you haven't read this thread for the last few months (seems
like years). Robin's whole point is that he firmly believes that the
problem would not have occurred if PL/I had been used instead of Ada.
Several EXTREMELY competent and experienced engineers who actually have
written flight-control software have patiently, and in some cases
(though I can't blame them) impatiently attempted to explain the
situation - that this was a bad design/management decision combined with
a fatal oversight in testing - to this poor student, but alas, to no
avail.

My advice, Michel - blow it off and don't let ++robin (or is it
@@robin?) get
to you, because "++robin" is actually an alias for John Cleese. He's
gathering material for a sequel to "The Argument Sketch"...    :-)