From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,28cd155693714664 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-17 13:27:08 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!jfk3-feed1.news.algx.net!allegiance!news-out.visi.com!hermes.visi.com!uunet!ash.uu.net!spool0900.news.uu.net!reader0901.news.uu.net!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D0E461A.8050207@mail.com> Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 16:27:06 -0400 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:1.1a) Gecko/20020614 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Faulty languages and Liability References: <3D0DE5E2.5010904@mail.com> <27085883.0206171100.7f6f0c5e@posting.google.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Organization: KBC Financial Products Cache-Post-Path: master.nyc.kbcfp.com!unknown@fixedcost.nyc.kbcfp.com X-Cache: nntpcache 3.0.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.253.250.10 X-Trace: 1024345627 reader1.ash.ops.us.uu.net 16842 204.253.250.10 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26179 Date: 2002-06-17T16:27:06-04:00 List-Id: Mike Silva wrote: > So then you're asserting that choice of language has absolutely no > effect on software quality? Not no effect, but not enough of an effect to justify requiring under pain of lawsuit that one be used and that one not be used. > And you're also asserting that this is > the consensus opinion in the industry? Nope. That's why so many places adopted Java. They just got tired of the risks of using Unchecked_Deallocation in their Ada code. > Coincidentally, from the currently-being-discussed Hoare paper of 1980 > (discussing such security checking as array bounds checking): > "In any respectible branch of engineering, failure to observe such > elementary precautions would have long been against the law." I wonder why Ada compilers allow these checks to be turned off, then? > So, given the well-known falible nature of human programmers, if one > has the choice between well-known tools which perform many such checks > automatically, and tools which do not perform such checks > automatically, and if a falible programmer then uses tools of the > second type which contribute to a major software failure, has due > diligence been used? Perhaps not in hiring that programmer. The tools in question are not equivalent in other aspects than safety, which is why the safe ones are not always chosen.