Re: Ganssle plugs Ada

[Shark8 <onewingedshark@gmail.com>]

Thanks for sharing that; it was a pretty good read.

I found some of the objections in the comments to be rather amusing; in particular this list [comments added]:

>1. Software that was not designed or specified right so that software implemented according to spec would not function correctly in the real world.

-- Granted; that's the problem with having an incorrect model. No language can help there.

> 2. Algorithmic errors. Poorly implemented algorithms. A sort that doesn't, for example.

-- No language can keep you from logic errors like ">" instead of ">=" -- Ada does help in this regard as much as it is able to by not cluttering the "operator namespaces" with similar symbols; this touches two of Ada's design goals: Readability & Maintainability.

> 3. Oversights of the metres vs feet variety, or poor calibration/filtering etc resulting in incorrect calculations.

-- Ada addresses this in as far as possible by disallowing different [numeric] types from freely interacting.

> 4. Timing/locking issues.

-- Ada spent lots of effort dealing with this; there's the Ada.Calendar package, the Duration type, and protected objects/methods which can severely cut down on race-conditions.

> 5. Incorrect hardware handling. For example using edge triggered instead of level triggered interrupts resulting in peripherals going to sleep and product failure.

-- I've not done a lot of low-level work... but I'm under the impression that Ada's interrupt handlers work perfectly fine.

> 6. Buffer overflows, poor pointer handling and the like.
>
> Ada can only address (6).

-- Nope, Ada addressed at least 2/3rds of that list.

> Valgrind etc can help to find (6) too when these turn up in C.

-- Ah, yes, 'help'.