Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception?

["Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

++ robin <rav@GOANNA.CS.RMIT.EDU.AU> writes:
>---As I stated, a PL/I programmer experienced in real-time
>programming, would not have made this stupid mistake.
>

    This still smacks of language bigotry. Why is it that only an
    experienced PL/I programmer would not make this "mistake"? I've
    personally seen *lots* of mistakes made by many "experienced"
    programmers in just about every language there is - including
    PL/I.

    Just remember that Ada has built-in runtime checks on conversions
    and the ability to write interrupt service routines as well. (And
    we "experienced Ada programmers" know how to use them, too!) The
    monday morning quarterbacks with 20/20 hindsight binoculars can
    easily see that the best thing would have been to leave in the
    checks or write an ISR which saturated the math rather than shut
    the unit down. But you don't need to be fluent in PL/I to see
    that.

    The language the system was programmed in or the language spoken
    by the developers has nothing to do with the error that occurred.
    It occurred because there was a conscious decision on someone's
    part to remove the safety net and to handle all exceptions by
    shutting down the channel. The designers no doubt made this
    decision for engineering reasons that are more complex than are
    outlined in the failure report and certainly had little or nothing
    at all to do with the language of implementation. And sitting in
    the back-seat after the crash telling the driver "If *I* had been
    driving, I'd never have crashed..." is condescending as well as
    being completely unprovable.

    MDC


Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        407.796.4669
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
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