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 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 107f24,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid107f24,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-02 16:10:44 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com!nntp.abs.net!pln-e!spln!dex!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!elf.eng.BSDI.COM!not-for-mail From: Chris Torek 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 14:52:57 -0700 Organization: None of The Above Sender: torek@bsdi.com Message-ID: <9kci3p$ri$1@elf.eng.bsdi.com> References: <9k9nci$1cq$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <$Id63yuv4BjB@eisner.encompasserve.org> <3b6903f5.1111682555@news.worldonline.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-280.newsdawg.com Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11150 comp.lang.c:71775 comp.lang.c++:79503 comp.lang.functional:7230 Date: 2001-08-02T14:52:57-07:00 List-Id: In article <3b6903f5.1111682555@news.worldonline.nl> Richard Bos writes: >I have no idea how good Marin is, but I'd trust Chris's code over, well, >almost anyone's. Certainly including my own. The reason? I've seen some >of Chris's code in the past, and it is generally as bug-free as any code >I've seen in any language. No matter how good it may be, it does still have bugs. More importantly, it has "defects", which are not necessarily the same thing. As a nice way of describing the difference, imagine a program that calculates pi to any given number of decimal places, and does so correctly every time. "Bug-free", perhaps -- but if the task is to calculate e, not pi, then the program has an obvious "defect". :-) Others may use the terminology differently (e.g., interchangeably), but I like this distinction -- it is like the one between tactics and strategy. An advantage to Ada (and I will say that I rather like the newer Ada, even without actually ever having used it for anything) is that you can tend to concentrate on the "defects" rather than the "bugs", because the strictness of the language causes the compiler to catch more of the latter. It always seemed to me that functional programming languages were even better in this respect; their usual drawback is in terms of performance. (Early Ada compilers like the Verdix one the U of MD tested built huge, slow programs, but I understand this is no longer much of a problem. One of these days I must get around to playing with Gnat...) -- In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Wind River Systems (BSD engineering) El Cerrito, CA, USA Domain: torek@bsdi.com +1 510 234 3167 http://claw.eng.bsdi.com/torek/ (not always up) I report spam to abuse@.