A very deliberate decision was taken to remove the safety checks (which may
not have saved anything anyway - it was a question of proper FDA.) in order
to gain needed performance. A static analysis was done that insured the code
was correct for the Arianne 4 flight envelope. It worked successfully in
that environment. Moving it to the Arianne 5 was done without any review of
those issues and nothing was done to test the unit in the new flight
envelope.

In other words, the software did *precisely* what it was designed to do - it
was just too bad that what it was designed to do wasn't the right thing to
do.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Ed Falis" <efalis@mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:3B694F80.C7C2D013@mediaone.net...
> Goran Larsson wrote:
> >
> > In article <3B687EDF.9359F3FC@mediaone.net>,
> > Ed Falis  <efalis@mediaone.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Read the report.
> >
> > I have. Your point is?
> >
> > --
> > G�ran Larsson     Senior Systems Analyst    hoh AT approve DOT se
>
> It was about inappropriately reused code.  I suppose that does bolster
> some of the arguments about poor programming, though the error in this
> case was due to decisions pretty far upstream from the code.
>
> - Ed