From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 11232c,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid11232c,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,899fc98b2883af4a X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-16 05:53:21 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!postnews1.google.com!not-for-mail From: softeng3456@netscape.net (soft-eng) Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada,misc.misc,comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Quality systems (Was: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate, and why it collapsed and died)) Date: 16 May 2003 05:53:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <9fa75d42.0305160453.29c0c4af@posting.google.com> References: <9fa75d42.0304230424.10612b1a@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305091549.48b9c5d9@posting.google.com> <7507f79d.0305121629.5b8b7369@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305130543.60381450@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 32.97.239.19 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1053089600 13295 127.0.0.1 (16 May 2003 12:53:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 16 May 2003 12:53:20 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63904 comp.object:63535 comp.lang.ada:37383 misc.misc:14221 comp.software-eng:19226 Date: 2003-05-16T12:53:20+00:00 List-Id: "Marin David Condic" wrote in message news:... > Preben Randhol wrote in message > news:slrnbc1tum.62g.randhol+abuse@kiuk0152.chembio.ntnu.no... > > soft-eng wrote: > > > > > 1) Hire good people, and give them the tools they > > > need. Many companies follow this approach, e.g. Microsoft. > > > (See http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000072.html ) > > > > LOL! Good quality? > > > > Microsoft? The inventer of the "Rebootive Multitasking Operating System"? An > example of "Quality"??? I share your amusement, Preben. > > My jet engine control has *never* failed in flight operational use. It > can't. Someone would die if it did. It's programmed in Ada. Coincidence? Or > is it possible that Ada contributed to its quality? But then I suppose we > just hire stupid people and try to control their every action through > militaristic command and control sorts of "Quality Systems" that ultimately > don't work so we are left to complain about our vendors or how lousy > languages like C are. :-) > It's been done with assembly language before. The point I have been trying to make is that Ada catches a small extra subset of errors (and compared to modern C, C++ or Java, the "extra" might be non-existent). Ada or not, you should have a mechanism that catches those errors before you ship out the jet engine. With professional programmers, the "type errors" are very few anyway (I estimated 2-3% of all errors, so if a bug-list has 100 items on it, and if more than 2-3 are type-safety issues, I would worry about programmer quality.) So the tradeoff is, possibly a bug or two caught at compile time rather than during testing, versus using a very large language that was created by fiat.