Re: Software Quality in Science

["Bob Spooner" <rls19@psu.edu>]

"Ludovic Brenta" <ludovic@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote in message 
news:ddb8b59c-d746-4228-b7a9-7ace7058018b@u26g2000yqm.googlegroups.com...
On Feb 9, 10:51 pm, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> "The net result of changing languages appears
> to be that the overall defect density appears to be about the same,
> (Hatton 1997). In other words, when a language corrects one
> deficiency, it appears to add one of its own."

Ah but the study must have overlooked one thing. A strongly-typed
language with an emphasis on software quality will naturally attract
developers who understand the benefits of strong typing and value
software quality. Conversely, a loosely-typed, lax language will
attract sloppy programmers who do not understand why typing should be
strong or who believe that bugs are good for their job security.

So, even if the author's assertion were true (i.e. Ada has just as
many traps and pitfalls as C, which I disagree with), developing in
Ada with Ada-minded programmers will always be safer than developing
in C with C-minded programmers. In fact, developing in C with Ada-
minded programmers is safer, too.

The same reasoning applies to Spark vs. Ada.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

In my experience, a lot of the problem with lack of improvement in software 
quality and reliability when using Ada results from developers writing Ada 
code the same way they write C. Then you don't get Ada's advantages and 
debugging is just as much of a problem as with C, with problem symptoms 
showing up far from the cause, etc. If Ada isn't used the way it was 
designed to be used, you get results similar to when you try to use a pair 
of pliers as a hammer.

Bob Spooner