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From: "John R. Strohm" <strohm@airmail.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.advocacy,comp.object,comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Using Ada for device drivers? (Was: the Ada mandate,
 and why it collapsed and died)
Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 16:09:43 -0500
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"Hyman Rosen" <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote in message
news:T7yva.16129$rV2.4345@nwrdny01.gnilink.net...
> Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> >     Shuffle(Deck, Gen);
> >
> > It is really, really hard to have bugs in code that is as unsubtle as
> > that.  And even if the universe changes, the changes are pretty
> > localized.  For example, it would take just a few minutes to change the
> > code to deal Pinochle hands, or even to switch to a Tarot deck.
>
> I think this is a perfect example of the blind spot of Ada programmers.
> You are so enamored of enumerations and perfectly indexed arrays and
> lack of buffer overflows that you will probably miss the most likely
> and subtle bug of this kind of code, which is that the Shuffle routine
> fails to produce each possible permutation with uniform probability!

Let's see, are you saying we shouldn't eliminate the simple problems because
we can't eliminate the hard problems at the same time?

The obvious end consequent of that argument is that we should all be
programming in absolute binary.