Re: Ada's Slide To Oblivion ...

[pontius@btv.MBI.com.invalid (Dale Pontius)]

In article <3C59FCD3.928144FB@adaworks.com>,
        Richard Riehle <richard@adaworks.com> writes:
...
> Imagine a surgeon who discovers how much money can be saved
> by purchasing Xacto blades instead of using blades manufactured
> to more stringent standards.   That is exactly the situation we are
> currently facing when contractors decide to use C or C++ instead
> of Ada.   On the surface one gets the same result.  It is only that
> superficial result that counts for the lowest bidder.
>
> Richard Riehle
>
You've made it into my file of most interesting quotes with this
one. Every now and then I try to point out that C programming
cost us all billions of dollars in the second half of last year.
But 'what everyone does' must be good enough, even if it's so
expensive, and there is something better.

By today's common programming practices, we have a situation
where the simplest/easiest way of programming string input gives
buffer overflows, and there for security holes. In C, that is.
Don't know about C++, but at least in Ada, the simplest/easiest
way of programming string input at worst would give a DOS
problem as the program crashed, and it wouldn't be much harder
to catch the exception and stop that.

Dale Pontius
NOT speaking for IBM