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From: "Joachim Durchholz" <joachim dot durchholz@halstenbach.com>
Subject: Re: Interresting thread in comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 2000/07/13
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Reply-To: "Joachim Durchholz" <joachim.durchholz@halstenbach.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.eiffel
Date: 2000-07-13T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

Bob Allen <ballen3@email.msn.com> wrote:
> Say for example a restaurant has a breakfast special for $3.99 you get
2
> eggs, bacon, hash browns, toast, and grits. I don't particularly like
grits,
> but the regular price for a breakfast with 3 eggs, bacon, hash browns
and
> toast costs $5.00. So I order the special. They run out of grits
before they
> fill my order. How can I let them off the hook for the grits? Remember
I
> don't run the restaurant and cannot change their contracts.

Then you're out of luck.
Translated to software terms, your scenario means that some software
module that offers a contract may occasionally be unable to stick with
the contract but the caller doesn't mind anyway. In other words, there's
a bug in the module that doesn't make a difference.
Given the nonlinear effects of software bugs, I don't think that this is
acceptable in a safety-critical environment.

Software contracts are nonnegotiable; if the existing contracts don't
satisfy you, write a new routine with a satisfactory contract.

Regards,
Joachim
--
This is not an official statement from my employer or from NICE.
Reply-to address changed to discourage unsolicited advertisements.