Re: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996

[Nicholas Paul Collin Gloucester <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org>]

On 2009-07-14, John B. Matthews <nospam@nospam.invalid> wrote:

|-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"In article                                                              |
|<c1a21454-44cf-4cbb-8623-136d2a8a4433@u38g2000pro.googlegroups.com>,     |
|Marco <prenom_nomus@yahoo.com> wrote:                                    |
|                                                                         |
|> On Jul 10, 11:17??am, "John B. Matthews" <nos...@nospam.invalid> wrote:|
|>                                                                        |
|> > > To me the whole section on Ada sounds like a typical spiel from    |
|> > > someone who really doesn't know Ada and has picked up a load of    |
|> > > anti-Ada propaganda from a number of disparate sources.            |
|>                                                                        |
|>    It doesn't sound particularly anti-Ada to me. Just anti only-one-   |
|> language I doubt he has much experience in Ada.                        |
|>                                                                        |
|> > The article claims, "had the system been written in C, the disaster  |
|> > would probably never have happened!" That conclusion is unsupported  |
|> > in the article.                                                      |
|>                                                                        |
|>   Mr Henney is a respectable SW writer. I assume he meant that if it   |
|> was written in C that more extensive testing would have occurred but   |
|> he should have said that or otherwise defended his statement.          |
|                                                                         |
|He is also "an author who writes on the subject of computer programming  |
|in C and C++," as well as "a member of the Association of C and C++      |
|Users":                                                                  |
|                                                                         |
|<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevlin_Henney>                             |
|<http://www.two-sdg.demon.co.uk/curbralan/>                              |
|                                                                         |
|As he is a noted author, I would have liked to hear his thoughts. Too    |
|often, proponents of less strongly typed languages argue that some       |
|combination of skill, experience and discipline are as effective as Ada, |
|and less expensive. This seems contradictory.                            |
|                                                                         |
|If I may extend the automotive analogy: the Ariane 5 project reused the  |
|ABS from a sedan in a truck without testing it in the truck. Well,       |
|except for the one time."                                                |
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I do not appreciate why you would want to hear from Kevlin Henney as
you know that he believes and writes bull. However, I was surprised
and displeased that he was a speaker at an Ada UK event earlier this
decade.

I am also a member of the Association of C & C++ Users. In response to
an email from me on one of our email lists, he claimed that taking
a precaution to protect against accidentally using = instead of == is
not worthwhile.

However, to be fair to him, he has treated Ada better than many other
C++ advocates.

(I have noticed today that he coauthored something with Mordechai
Ben-Ari. That is a surprise.)