Re: F-22 ADA Programming

[Adam Beneschan <adambeneschan@gmail.com>]

On Tuesday, October 28, 2014 2:06:23 PM UTC-7, Jeffrey Carter wrote:
> On 10/28/2014 11:37 AM, Adam Beneschan wrote:
> > 
> > I'm sorry, but this is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen posted in this newsgroup.
> 
> Thanks! I think Botton may be right about the time machine, though. I was mainly
> playing devil's advocate, but there are ethical issues in language choice.

I apologize--I may have taken you too literally.


> The ethics of taking a job using a lousy language vs suffering unemployment may
> not be significant. It's certainly not on a par with collaborating with Nazis
> and remaining alive vs certain death.
> 
> But what about when the S/W is to provide secure network communications or to
> control a self-driving car? Then those who choose to use the lousy language are
> at least partly responsible for the billions in financial consequences of a
> security vulnerability, or the deaths due to a S/W error. The ethical
> significance of the choice seems much greater.

I don't know--I see it differently.  Consider this situation: You're an expert programmer skilled at both Ada and C++.  You have been offered a position working on the software for a self-driving car.  The code will be in C++.  You will not be in charge of the project and will not have the power to change the language decision.  Which is more ethical:

(1) Turn down the job;
(2) Accept the position, and plan to use the skills you possess in writing safe, secure code, to influence the rest of the team to adopt coding (and testing) practices that result in code that's as reliable as anything written in Ada would be.

If the team would be writing sketchy code without your presence, would it really be more ethical to turn down the job, let them foist unsafe cars on the market, and then say "Well, they've caused six deaths, but hey, my hands are clean because I had nothing to do with that project"??  I'm not so sure.

(And if anyone believes #2 is impossible, because the C++ language somehow emits  unsafeness waves that travel through the air and into your monitor and turn all your carefully-written safe code into unsafe code ... OK, I'm being silly, but that just isn't correct.  That's one of the reasons I reacted so strongly to Jeff's earlier post, because it seemed to equate using an unsafe language to writing unsafe code, which of course is wrong.  You can write safe code in any language.  It may take a little more work in some languages; but if you're aware of the need to write safe code, and are disciplined, it can be done.  And if you're not, Ada isn't going to help.)

                                -- Adam