Re: Boeing and Dreamliner

[aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch)]

Hyman Rosen wrote:

>But the original designers didn't leave any indication behind that the
>software they had written would fail in such a modified usage. That's
>not just my conclusion, that's the conclusion of the investigatory
>board. Had they documented the limits on trajectories, teh Ariane 5
>team would have known that the code needed to be re-examined.
>
>Since when do Ada advocates favor testing over documentation?

Testing is a fundamental requirement for any enginering. Please, read this
attentively: for any engineering. This is one of main characteristcs that
differentiate engineering from scientific exploration, art, terrorism... all
activities, good or bad, looking for a chance.

Software engineering is, first of all, a kind and a part of engineering,
therefore it inherits testing as its fundamental requirement.

Ada language was designed and is used primarily for software engineering.
So it should not surprise anyone when Ada advocates demand testing.

In engineering, documentation is (and always was) secondary vs. testing.
Just like your human rights are secondary vs. your need to eat -- you may be
very unhappy without you rights or with restricted rights, but you still can
keep hope for future liberation and future better life; but if you don't eat
you'll certainly die very soon,

Returning to the Ariane 5 case, if I were Civil Investigator for this case,
I would close civil part of the investigation at the moment when I became
aware of absence of testing -- at that moment I'd call for Criminal Investigator.
Then, criminal part of the investigation must decide whether there was major
neglect or deliberate plot (sabotage or financial affair, for example), and
all technical details (about numbers, stacks, overflows etc.) naturally
belongs to it. Personally, I think that Criminal Investigator would suspect
a plot when he discovered that the launch was doomed unconditionally.


Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia