Re: Faulty languages and Liability

["Marin David Condic" <dont.bother.mcondic.auntie.spam@[acm.org>]

If you brought suit, it wouldn't be with the claim "You didn't use Ada so
you owe me money..." it would be because "You didn't build solid software
and allowed easily detected & corrected bugs to get into the product you
sold me so you owe me money..." Ada expert witnesses would testify "Why yes,
Ada would have detected this error and never let it see the light of day -
and it is readily available technology..." Similarly, other language experts
for languages that are safer than C (or C++?) could be brought up to
testify. "Why yes, Your Honor, everyone in the programming profession
*knows* there are major holes in the C language that are quickly and easily
plugged up by Language X, Language Y and Language Z. If error reduction was
at all important to the defendant, they could have used one of those
languages...."

An argument could be made. Cases could be brought. Suits might actually be
won. Would that *force* people to use Ada? Not at all. It would *force* them
to take responsibility for building crap software & take measures to to
correct that. They *could* do that with C - it would just cost less and be
done faster with Ada.

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com


"Larry Kilgallen" <Kilgallen@SpamCop.net> wrote in message
news:Sti2rd9OKA6y@eisner.encompasserve.org...
> In article <3D0C7C0B.5000707@mail.com>, Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com>
writes:
>
> I am not the person you quote, but my interest as a software (including
> embedded software) consumer has only to do with how well it works, not
> with how that is achieved.  If a vendor wants to provide me software,
> be it an Ada compiler or an airbag controller, that is written in the
> APL programming language, that is immaterial to me so long as the result
> is high reliability.