From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!.POSTED.fn3LatRFkm9/xzEj7F2/NQ.user.gioia.aioe.org!not-for-mail From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Intervention needed? Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2019 09:13:47 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <6e1977a5-701e-4b4f-a937-a1b89d9127f0@googlegroups.com> <6f9ea847-2903-48c8-9afc-930201f2765a@googlegroups.com> <87a7hgvxnx.fsf@nightsong.com> <4e240c66-dce8-417f-9147-a53973681e29@googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: fn3LatRFkm9/xzEj7F2/NQ.user.gioia.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/60.6.1 X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.9.2 Content-Language: en-US Xref: reader01.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:55992 Date: 2019-03-29T09:13:47+01:00 List-Id: On 2019-03-29 06:13, Bojan Bozovic wrote: > On Thursday, March 28, 2019 at 9:48:09 PM UTC+1, G. B. wrote: >> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: >>> On 2019-03-28 08:01, Maciej Sobczak wrote: >>> Attempts to use quality assurance >>> methods known in engineering disciplines to software result in >>> nonsensical standards and certification procedures which assure nothing >>> but wasting human resources. >>> >> >> The equivalence class of economically viable software firms demonstrates >> that there exist a sweet spot. It lies between investing in the production >> of correct logic and selling software that has layers of waste. >> >> For an analogy, compare compost and composites. >> >> Customers and programmers alike might say that anything with waste in it is >> not sweet, it’s bitter. But, they are sheep. Enjoy Ada while you can. > > With Internet of Things and the like devices, self-driving cars etc. the need for correctness in software will only increase not otherwise. When computers can affect the environment physically matter of correct behaviour becomes paramount, so Ada really have the future. What's important is to promote it outside of safety-critical software, for general programming, so that those that don't even know about Ada now can learn it and use it. Software of this kind is practically non-testable. In mechanical engineering with its differentiable functions and linear approximations of, you can test for extreme points and deduce the rest working. So the car crash tests go. With software and especially with decision making tasks that approach is doomed. You can die at any "speed" just same. Thus correctness proofs is the only tool left. -- Regards, Dmitry A. Kazakov http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de