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From: Nick Roberts <nickroberts@callnetuk.com>
Subject: Re: Ada GC (was Re: Ammo-zilla)
Date: 1999/11/10
Message-ID: <3829D562.5F102A83@callnetuk.com>#1/1
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Richard D Riehle wrote:
> ...
> There has been some discussion lately of software as an engineering
> practice.  It will not be an engineering discipline until we call a
> mistake a mistake, forcing personnel to fully accept responsibility for
> their errors of omission as well as commission.   A programmer calls it
> a bug.  An engineer calls it a mistake.

And, as a corollary, customers need to be educated into rejecting
software with a 'bug' in it just as diligently as they would reject any
other product with a defect.

It would help for our respective governments (UK, US, and elsewhere) to
produce some (not too heavy) legislation to assist in this (e.g.
outlawing some of the more outrageous evasions of liability in typical
software licences). Sadly, however, I think our politicians have
undergone a physical adaptation to their habitat (whereby the brain is
replaced by an air sac, for the more efficient generation of hot air).

-- 
Nick Roberts
Computer Consultant (UK)
http://www.callnetuk.com/home/nickroberts
http://www.adapower.com/lab/adaos