C.A.R. Hoare on liability

[Wes Groleau <wesgroleau@despammed.com>]

Tying together two recent threads,
a quote from "The Emperor's Old Clothes":

    ... we asked our customers whether they wished us
    to provide an option to switch off these checks
    in the interests of efficiency on production runs. 
    Unanimously, they urged us not to--they already knew
    how frequently subscript errors occur on production
    runs where failure to detect them would be disastrous. 
    I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language
    designers and users ahve not learned this lesson. 
    In any respectable branch of engineering, failure
    to observe such elementary precautions would have
    long been against the law.

-- 
Wes Groleau
http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau