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From: WhiteR@no.spam.please.CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US (Robert S. White)
Subject: Re: The stupidity of all the Ariane 5 analysts.
Date: 1997/07/21
Message-ID: <5qucs7$jie$3@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 257900070
References: <33C835A5.362A@flash.net> <EDCo7K.Ezr@syd.csa.com.au>
 <33CC0548.4099@flash.net> <5qitoi$fdv$1@news.irisa.fr>
 <33CD6512.2404@flash.net> <01bc92e6$7a6f9e40$287b7b7a@tlo2>
 <33CEAF05.6389@flash.net> <33D2827B.41C67EA6@eiffel.com>
Organization: If you have a good KTN then I might tell you.
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 1997-07-21T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <33D2827B.41C67EA6@eiffel.com>, Bertrand.Meyer@eiffel.com says...
>
>To repeat once again the basic point made in the
>paper by Jean-Marc Jezequel and myself: it is dangerous
>and unjustifiable, especially in a mission-critical setting,
>to reuse a software element without a specification.

  We "aerospace" people agree.


>All this is rhetorics and cannot succeed to obscure the basic
>claim that systematic use of Design by Contract would probably
>have avoided the crash.

  The problem with this is that you are preaching to the choir.
Long long ago, before Eiffel, the general concept of capturing
system requirements in a spec document, flowing down to a software
requirements document, conducting detailed design reviews with the
requirment documents as resources/authorities (or getting them 
updated) and finally having software qualification tests done to 
prove performance to the software requirements spec has been 
practiced by the "aerospace" industry.  The "crash" resulted 
because of a failure to fully follow this existing practice.  
Your papers about Eiffel and Design By Contract are just, IMO,
another way to implement the concept of developing software that
must comply to requirements.

_____________________________________________________________________
Robert S. White         -- An embedded systems software engineer