Re: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996

["John B. Matthews" <nospam@nospam.invalid>]

In article <t8me55930rcv5n4ml2o4bou99e0lvcu199@4ax.com>,
 John McCabe <john@nospam.assen.demon.co.uk> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:04:21 -0700 (PDT), Martin
> <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com> wrote:
[...]
> >My understanding of the Ariane pretty slim but if Wikipedia is 
> >accurate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5) then it seems 
> >likely that the same error would have occurred, as my reading is 
> >that it was the deliberate removal of Ada checks that led to the 
> >32-bit Float being assigned to a 16-bit value, i.e. that part was 
> >C-in-Ada-syntax.
> 
> Interestingly enough, it is claimed in this article by the presenter, 
> with no reference as far as I can see to back up the claim.
> 
> http://www.two-sdg.demon.co.uk/curbralan/papers/MindYourLanguage.pdf

The author may have meant to cite "ARIANE 5 Flight 501 Failure Report 
by the Inquiry Board" in reference 7, but the link is invalid:

<http://www.esrin.esa.it/htdocs/tidc/Press/Press96/ariane5rep.html>

An archive may be found here:

<http://web.archive.org/web/20000815230639/www.esrin.esa.it/htdocs/tidc/
Press/Press96/ariane5rep.html>

> 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.

The article claims, "had the system been written in C, the disaster 
would probably never have happened!" That conclusion is unsupported in 
the article.

In contrast, I never get tired of reading Ian Joyner's "C++??", which 
I'd forgotten has a whole section on C:

<http://www.literateprogramming.com/c++critique.pdf>

-- 
John B. Matthews
trashgod at gmail dot com
<http://home.roadrunner.com/~jbmatthews/>