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=0.7 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM, FREEMAIL_REPLYTO,REPLYTO_WITHOUT_TO_CC autolearn=no 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: 103376,bc1361a952ec75ca X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,582dff0b3f065a52 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-08-09 12:43:01 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!130.133.1.3!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!212.102.229.162!not-for-mail From: "Joachim Durchholz" 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: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 21:42:47 +0200 Message-ID: <9kup40$6pomr$1@ID-9852.news.dfncis.de> References: <9kpo9r$415@augusta.math.psu.edu> <5drpk9.l0e.ln@10.0.0.2> <9krhd2$6po@augusta.math.psu.edu> <9kubta$h4p$1@nh.pace.co.uk> Reply-To: "Joachim Durchholz" NNTP-Posting-Host: 212.102.229.162 X-Trace: fu-berlin.de 997386176 7135963 212.102.229.162 (16 [9852]) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:11701 comp.lang.c:73233 comp.lang.c++:81316 comp.lang.functional:7446 Date: 2001-08-09T21:42:47+02:00 List-Id: Marin David Condic wrote: > Failure of software is 100% due to mistakes made by the author. :-) Wrong. A sizable fraction is due to misunderstandings between author and customer (or whoever writes the specifications), and it's not always the author who's responsible for them. > This is > true no matter what language you are talking about. This is indeed true. The language with does still matter, of course. Since the number of bugs is roughly proportional to lines of code, a language that expresses much in few lines of code (without becoming obfuscated!) is at an advantage here. Abstraction facilities are important here; and the ability to abstract from stuff like memory management and similar things, at least at higher levels of the software, is important for that. Note that I say "at an advantage", not "better" - to be productive, you need access to libraries, a debugger, maybe a profiler, maybe a GUI builder, maybe other things depending on the task at hand. The language itself is important, but the paraphernalia have beome *very* important in the last decade. Regards, Joachim -- This is not an official statement from my employer.