Re: How Ada could have prevented the Red Code distributed denial of service attack.

[randhol+abuse@pvv.org (Preben Randhol)]

On Sat, 4 Aug 2001 14:36:10 -0400, David Lee Lambert wrote:

> I'm sure that one can write a secure webserver in Ada,  but I personally
> would trust a mission-critical system that I had written in C better,
> because I've had more experience with the language and the available
> environment.  I certainly would plan out such a system very carefully.

I can understand your argument that you know C better and more
comfortable with it, but it is not a valid argument when one make
mission-critical software like airplane systems, train, nuclear power
plants etc...

Your problems also lies in that C has unsafe pointers and no strict
typing. Another problem is that C scales very poorly, leading to obscure
code.

I personally would disembark an airplane if they said that the software
is written in C. If it is written in Ada I would have stayed.

I encourage you to try out Ada a bit and I really think that you will
change your mind about which language you want to use in critical
software. It really is a huge difference from C.

Here you find the design goals of Ada: 
   http://www.adapower.com/rm95/arm95_3.html#SEC3

And here is an article from Business Week, which is a interest read: 

Software Hell (int'l edition)

Glitches cost billions of dollars and jeopardize human lives. How can we
kill the bugs?

[...]
   �With the low points of just the past 24 months, you could build a
   Software Hall of Infamy. In a fast-flowing river of woe, software
   bugs--along with viruses and security loopholes--have plagued most
   new releases of Microsoft Windows and Office products, Netscape
   Navigator, Intuit's Quicken, and countless other personal-computer
   applications. Glitches have crippled online auctions and trading
   sites and delayed product shipments at Hershey (HSY), Whirlpool
   (WHR), and Handspring, maker of Visor palm computers. All told, bad
   software cost U.S. businesses $85 billion in lost productivity last
   year, according to Jim Johnson, president of market researcher The
   Standish Group in Dennis, Mass.�
[...]

whole article here:

   http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_49/b3658015.htm

Preben
-- 
�Don't use C;  In my opinion,  C is a library programming language
 not an app programming language.�  - Owen Taylor (GTK+ developer)

Use Ada 95, a free language. More info at http://www.adapower.com/