Re: Do we need "Mission-Critical" software? Was: What to Do?

[Cesar Scarpini Rabak <csrabak@uol.com.br>]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:
> 
> Cesar Scarpini Rabak wrote:
> > "Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" wrote:
> > [snipped]
> > > First of all, I like the idea of the book. It should be written.
> >
> > A book! Let's start with an article and have it published in Dr. Dobbs's
> > Mag first!
> >
> > just my .019...
> 
> Articles are also fine ;-)

Great, lets see if we get enough material to pump a good one!
Incidentally, Dr. Dobbs _did_ publish an article about GNAT some time
ago (my personal library is all packed from a recent office moving and
could not pinpoint in their site).

> 
> > > (Advocacy mode on..)
> > [snipped]
> >
> > Whereas fine points are brought here, i would like to point that
> > software security/safety does not come from language but several other
> > things...
> 
> I'm not suggesting that the Ada95 language and/or compiler will solve all
> security problems, or even reliability ones. But it does allow your CPU
> to point out a lot of very common problems that lead to unreliable and/or
> insecure programs. If you focus on all other aspects of security, as people
> do when the write in C/C++/Java for example, then you leave unecessary
> risks within the system. In a nutshell, Ada95 greatly improves the chances
> of a program being correct, and less likely to be exploitable.

Agreed. But, again we're lost in the "mainstream" school of thought.
Java advocates convinced the masses that the "only" dangerous feature of
a nice language (C++) was pointers so they made an elegant one (only OO)
w/o pointers... and rest is history. (Anedoctically  it can be added
that in the infant days of Java a lot of people used to say that JAVA
stand for "Just Another Version of Ada"!)


> 
> > I counter case, usually used by Ada disgusters is the famous ESA Arianne
> > rocket, although programmed in Ada it made a very expensive piece of
> > hardware burn (literally!) due an error in design, notwitstanding the
> > supposed high quality language (and btw process) to build the softaware.
> >
> > Cesar
> 
> You can never eliminate human error or stupidity completely. I am sure many
> here on this news group could site "stupid Ada tricks" that are not the
> fault of the language or its tools, but of those USING the "tool". Kinda
> like the apprentice mechanic that uses a caliper as a C-clamp.
> 
> Your example is more the design/human-error type, which again, is not
> completely avoidable. At least you can say that Ada did exactly as it
> was told to do, when it burned it's hardware!  What more can you ask
> of a computer?

Again we are stuck with the "mental image". Ada "did not avoid" and it
is harder to learn, etc. (I'm not advocating this, please!). OTOH, Meyer
started to canvass the community about a new programming paradigm
("programming by contract") and it brand new language that supports this
(Eiffel), which again takes the focus out of Ada.


In a nutshell, I partially agree that to regain momentum (out of some
academic circles and specific niche markets). We need to get some
projects public interest and get them a feel of the advantages of "our"
programming environment.

The idea of games seems interesting, an OS seems to me too far fetching
(let alone FSF struggling to finish their GNU OS, a small community of
Ada programmers would be faster?). Other things we could try is to go
the FSF "todo/wishlist" and look for some production software FSF needs,
some of them although not as exciting as games or rocket control, are
still software engineering respectable projects, and if they catch the
user audience they rather be stable/robust. Two which I recall were
office related includind a general ledger program. I wonder if a Free
version of an ERP package wouldn't be more worth investing than a
competing OS.

[]


> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG

Cesar (PY2CSH)