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: fdb77,5f529c91be2ac930 X-Google-Attributes: gidfdb77,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,59ec73856b699922 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,899fc98b2883af4a X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,583275b6950bf4e6 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-05-16 18:48:06 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,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 18:48:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Message-ID: <9fa75d42.0305161748.1735fc32@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> <254c16a.0305140549.3a87281b@posting.google.com> <9fa75d42.0305141747.5680c577@posting.google.com> <3ec4b1c9$1@news.wineasy.se> NNTP-Posting-Host: 12.243.127.233 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1053136086 18372 127.0.0.1 (17 May 2003 01:48:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 17 May 2003 01:48:06 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.java.advocacy:63971 comp.object:63590 comp.lang.ada:37428 comp.software-eng:19250 Date: 2003-05-17T01:48:06+00:00 List-Id: "AG" wrote in message news:... > > "soft-eng" wrote: > > > I don't agree that Ada is likely to be particularly useful > > > for catching errors in a professional environment -- say 2-3% > > > of the actual errors at best. If it's catching more than > > > that, I don't see how you can have good people. > > Remember, those 2-3% just may account for, say, > 50% of the effort. Let me give an example: > > I had once to track down a bug which manifested > itself in a pop-up error screen telling the end-user > that "Default coercion is not available" [imagine > the amount of more or less sarcastic comments > caused by that] > > Turned out that, way down in the call chain, > one thing expected a number. The other was > providing a string [That's the bug]. However, > the run-time system insisted by default on doing > the best it can converting from one to the other. > So that worked. Until some set of inputs > produced a string that could *not* be converted > to a number and the thing keeled over and died. > > In fact, the authors of the string-producing > module were quite good at what they did > since that error happened very rarely under > some very special and unforeseen circumstances. > Can't blame them for missing it - everyone > makes mistakes or fails to catch them. > However, a strict (or even not-so-strict) > type system would have prevented > that problem from even making it past > compile-time. Not to mention the actual > field-release. C would catch that in a vanilla situation (assigning an integer to a string pointer), so I assume the situation was far from vanilla, in which case it is possible for things like that to happen in Ada.