Re: a new language, designed for safety !

["Dan'l Miller" <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Monday, June 9, 2014 2:06:27 AM UTC-5, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> The language-invented methods here are unsafe because it is not what the
> programmer would normally expect calling them [*]. Thus in both cases the
> languages are unsafe.
> [...snip...]
> *  Robert's definition of unsafety formulated differently: unexpected
> behavior from familiar syntax ["misuse"].

[Unexpected /= undefined]
No, Dmitry, that is my definition formulated differently, not Robert's.  Robert's definition that I was critiquing (and that, in effect, you too are critiquing) hinges on *undefined* behaviors in the language specification (and constantly remembering to not evoke them is a battle-hardened badge of honor in C & C++ culture).  *Unexpected* behaviors that are well-defined as required in the Ada language specification are, by definition, not *undefined* in Ada---hence the key point of departure from Robert's excessively-narrow definition of "unsafe".  Unexpected behaviors resulting from familiar syntax are a category of defect that can go unnoticed in a shipped product and cause harshly-deliterious outcomes---hence the coverage by my definition of "unsafe" evoking Nancy Leveson's system-engineering school of thought on safeware http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Leveson.  In my definition of "unsafe", for brevity and to drive home a crucial safety point, I rename "harshly-deliterious outcomes" to be bodily injury and/or death.

(Btw, why fast-forward safety in software to bodily injury and death? The concept of safety becomes too politically muddled for clear thinking if debate goes off on tangents when the set of harshly-deliterious outcomes includes legal liability, company's financial loss, user's financial loss, and other harshly-deliterious outcomes that depend on socioeconomic philosophy [which some readers might not share] rather than the more-instinctual moral laws of don't hurt people and don't kill people [which I hope all readers share].)