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From: cross@augusta.math.psu.edu (Dan Cross)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.functional
Subject: Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red Code distributed denial of
    service attack.
Date: 2 Aug 2001 14:01:32 -0400
Organization: Mememememememmeme
Message-ID: <9kc4hs$afk@augusta.math.psu.edu>
References: <bebbba07.0107292308.d1192fc@posting.google.com>
 <GHFDJp.G7q@approve.se>
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Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11113 comp.lang.c:71698
 comp.lang.c++:79411 comp.lang.functional:7209
Date: 2001-08-02T18:01:33+00:00
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In article <GHGA3t.Izq@approve.se>, Goran Larsson <hoh@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>The report clearly shows that you can have problematic software in
>any language. It was also ironic that it was a compiler generated
>range check on a value (that was not going to be used) that was the
>event that started the destructive chain of events. The management
>decision that any exception had to be due to hardware error (and
>warranted a shutdown) was _perhaps_ influenced by the belief that
>writing code in Ada resulted in bug free programs. :-)

I'm afraid that this is inaccurate (as has already been pointed out),
but it also misses the point.  No one ever said you couldn't write bad
code in Ada, but we did point out that it's easier to write good code
in it.

A lot of the arguments I've read in this thread in defense of, eg, C,
are analogous to the argument, ``Well, my friend died in a car crash
even through s/he was wearing a seat-belt, so why should I bother
wearing mine?''  One hopes the answer is self-evident.

	- Dan C.