Re: ADA vs Java

[HansF <News.Hans@telus.net>]

On Mon, 20 Jun 2005 08:30:02 +0200, Pascal Obry interested us by writing:

> 
> I did not answer this question because it is not a question, I mean you pretty
> well know the answer. All piece of software has bugs. But softwares built with
> Ada tends to have far less bugs per sloc than other languages. See recent

The question was originaly rhetorical - you claimed earlier that the
standard disclaimer was related to safety and reliability, and now you
acknowledge that Ada has bugs (at least potentially), but does not have a
disclaimer, and therefore does not make the user aware of *possible*
deficiencies. I see the potential for a lawsuit in any decently litigious
society.

To conclude and summarize my points:

- the reason for the disclaimer by many large software organizations is to
avoid legal repercussions.  It has nothing to do with the quality of the
compiler, nor the quality of the resultant code; and

- it may be that the attitiude of the Ada community, with respect to
thorough analysis and test cases, is the significant contributor to the
use of Ada in critical environments, rather than the compiler itself.


The reason I am driving on this - I pay large quantities of money to an
insurance company to cover myself as a consultant in the instance that I
could be sued due to an unforeseen (not even deliverate) error or
ommission.  This, and my standard contract disclaimer, simply means that I
do not wish to waste all on a lawsuit - but it does NOT reflect on the
quality I deliver.

-- 
Hans Forbrich