Re: JOB:Sr. SW Engineers Wanted-Fortune 500 Co

["Mike Silva" <mjsilva@jps.net>]

Hyman Rosen <hymie@prolifics.com> writes:
>> Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> writes:
>> >    3. I think I speak for most (if not everyone) here when I say that I
>> > find it appalling that anyone would develop a product like a pacemaker,
>> > on which the life of a human being depends on its continuous reliable
>> > operation, in a language known to be as error-prone as C. This is not
an
>> > opportunity for me to be "improving other's lives". It's an opportunity
>> > for me to screw up and *take* someone's life. No thanks.
>>
>> Good thing the Ariane 5 didn't land on anyone's house.

>OK, I'm being a smartass, but I am making a valid point.
>Having its software written in Ada was not enough to keep
>the Ariane 5 from going off-course and being blown up. In
>the same way, having the software of a pacemaker written
>in C is not enough to force it to blow up.

This is a silly strawman, since nobody (at least, nobody who wants to be
taken seriously) ever makes such extreme claims.  It's all a matter of
increasing the odds, and both the C language and the C culture invite buggy
code (sad to say, I've written my share).  Every C programmer should perform
the eye-opening exercise of determining how many C bugs they encounter would
not have been possible, or would have been quickly spotted, in Ada.  I did,
and the answer was "most!"  I wonder if the C culture doesn't just accept
these language-preventable bugs as a fact of life, as I did for many years,
without realizing how many can be caught by a safer language (and the
culture of safety that will naturally accompany it).

>I would assume
>that pacemaker software undergoes thorough critical-systems
>development and testing regardless of what language it's
>written in.

I think one Ariane investor was overheard saying something similar to
another Ariane investor just before liftoff...

Mike