Re: Software Quality in Science

["Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)" <yannick_duchene@yahoo.fr>]

On 9 fév, 22:51, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> And this comment which addresses the use of Ada:
>
> "In C, note that function prototypes were well used only around 60% of
> the time and as a result, interface faults accounted for about 24% of
> the total. In other words, if function prototypes were mandated in all
> C functions, 24% of all serious faults would disappear.  The
> computational scientist should not use this as an argument in favour
> of C++ or Ada in which they are mandated. A large number of new
> failure modes result from this action, which lack of space prohibits
> further discussion here. The net result of changing languages appears
> to be that the overall defect density appears to be about the same,
> (Hatton 1997). In other words, when a language corrects one
> deficiency, it appears to add one of its own."

Switching from C to C++ is nearly the same as switching from C to
another C (C++ is backward compatible with C, as fat as I know), so
this is not surprising there.

About Ada now, this could nice to better advocate the assertion that
Ada may (as suggested) correct some error but will add some others.
What's funding this assertion ?

A question : was the studies on migration from C to Ada made by C
developers who had just learn the basics of Ada, or by Ada developers
with minimum experiencing in Ada ?