Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> 2. Who wants to ask public? They had been asked before, they shown
>> absolute inability to make reasonable choice.
> 
> There is no need to ask public for this matter. There is a perception that
> public simply will not buy software at those prices in comparable
> quantities - and this is enough.

Again, show me figures. So far it is one perception against another.

>> You need no experts to analyze the software.
> 
> Here should be a smile also? Or a grin?

Neither.

>> Requirements and terms of
>>liability are pretty easy to set and check.
> 
> Are you a lawyer? I think that a person who is not a lawyer should not
> make statements of this kind anyway.

I was not talking about technical details of a particular license agreement.
I was talking about a common, long established practice of protecting
customers from frauds. So, are you a lawyer to claim that this practice is
inapplicaple to software?

> By the way, I remind you that Robert Dewar (who, although not being a
> lawyer himself, nevertheless have some real experience with these matters
> regarding software) warned many times (both here and in GCC mailing list)
> against making law-related statements about software without consulting a
> professional lawyer.

These discussions concerned concrete details of various GPLs.

>> >  significant part of software is a cutting edge in one or another
>> > dimension, and therefore it naturally can't guarantee its performance
>> > in every particular circumstances. So, general liability will severely
>> > impede progress, and this for many applications overweights eventual
>> > losses. Note that it may be true even for software that may directly
>> > endanger life of a human person.
>>
>> The only edge MS-Office cuts is consuming as much memory as any new
>> generation of computers might have.
> 
> Well, it is easy to show you at least one dimension in which MS Word is at
> the cutting edge: it is the number of users (with all their diversity in
> needs, habits and preferences).

Excellent. First you said about some "cutting edge" preventing "sofware
performance". Then you continued, that the "cutting edge" was the number of
users. So it is the users buying MS products, who are responsible for the
miserable sate of the software? Ergo the market does not work. My point, we
are in full argeement.

>> Who needs *this* progress?
> 
> Perhaps, people. Those people who want to prepare a document and print it
> - and then go to other, perhaps more attractive things.

I didn't asked about purpose of a text processor. I did about the software
quality.

>> > For a change, you may think also why so many advertisments (not
>> > necessarily related to sofware) aren't liable -;)
>>
>> Because they are for free! No pay, no play.
> 
> What? This is simply beautiful. Well, good, advertisments do not directly
> take money from those who do not believe them; but they take enough money
> from those who do believe them - these people really pay for all
> advertisments (the cost of adverstisments is naturally added to the cost
> of the products themselves).

Exactly. They do not like it, they hate it, yet they pay for it. Now,
substitute "Ada" for "advertisements" and you will have a glimpse of what I
meant.

>> > when you appeal to the government for such purposes, you just try to
>> > exploit another market - a narrow one, for privileged parties only.
>>
>> and more competent ones.
> 
> You are very loyal.

Delegation of rights is a fundamental difference between anarchy and
democraty.

> Good for you. Yes, certainly, they are most competent,
> most responsible, and even most handsome/beautiful. How can it be
> otherwise, as they are chosen either by free general elections or,
> recursively, by those who was chosen by free general election, etc. ?

This is how it works. Should I quote Churchill?

>> Again, there are issues essential to the existence of our civilization.
> 
> You are so focusing on our civilization... don't you think that
> civilization is quite a complex thing, and it is not easy to determine
> what is essential for it? But at least you don't refer to the God's will,
> and this is good.
> 
>> Software development becomes one of them. Ada is just an indicator of how
>> things are going on.
> 
> Don't you see that these two your sentences contradict each other?
> Ada essentially defies the general notion of "software", Ada expects you
> to analyze each your problem deeply, with all its specifics, not relying
> upon some general "software" fashions and solutions. It does not mean that
> you should forget all your previous experience and it doesn not preclude
> any general computer science - you can use all that if it helps you, but
> you can't rely upon that, you can't get excuses from that.

Where is any contradiction?

>> > You dream to prevent all errors (without magic -:) , while I do not
>> > believe that this dream may come true - at all levels at the same time.
>>
>> If that will not become true, we as humankind, will simply commit
>> suicide.
> 
> Not at all. We as humankind were making countless errors all the history,
> and still are alive, and even are observing some progress.

If your definition of progress reads as "cutting edge" = number of sold
copies, then yes, we are.

> Well, maybe you don't know, but in dark years of the Cold War, a
> substantial part of the hope was that there are enough errors in missile
> systems (that is, missiles themselves, navigation etc.) on both sides; so
> that if they will be really launched then most of them either will not
> takeoff or will not explode or will explode somewhere in ocean. And some
> of us also hoped that the goverments are also somehow aware of that
> possibility of those massive errors, and neither side can be sure whether
> it has much less errors or much more errors than the opponent.

Pretty silly, because it is actually no matter where it would explode.
Having an atomic tonnage of America or Russia, one needs no missiles. One
could explode it on own territory with the same effect.

>> >> As an example, I know a
>> >> car vendor, which for years is unable to find a bug in its *one*
>> >> engine controller, running *one* task, causing sporadic stop.
>> > 
>> > Poor vendor, he can't reach me -:)  Did he try to create a simulator?
>>
>> Of what? Motor simulator? Roller dynamometer? Climatic chamber?
>> Autopilot?
> 
> You said - "a bug in its engine controller", so I mean a simulator of that
> engine controller.

Controller is just a processor, usually there is no need to simulate it.
Anyway the cost of various testing, simulating etc, hardware/software is
measured in tens of millions of dollars. Their maintenance..., who knows.
So a manager might think that this is more than enough to find a bug. But
it is quite strange to hear similar statements from a software man.
Debugging is the least productive way for preventing software faults in
embedded/real-time world. In many cases it does not work at all.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de