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=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: a07f3367d7,f096ebb5dcac664d X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,public,usenet X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII Path: g2news2.google.com!news3.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!usenet-fr.net!gegeweb.org!aioe.org!not-for-mail From: John McCabe Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ariane 5 Failure from 1996 Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:09:04 +0100 Organization: Aioe.org NNTP Server Message-ID: References: <851f477d-c5a4-4c87-b930-4a47ba508579@h8g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: RXEkuaSUwmKe0XIGFYSK7A.user.aioe.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@aioe.org X-Notice: Filtered by postfilter v. 0.7.9 X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 Cancel-Lock: sha1:ojB1niv2F0VGZD1qC6cqCv7qp1s= Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:6943 Date: 2009-07-10T16:09:04+01:00 List-Id: On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:04:21 -0700 (PDT), Martin wrote: >On Jul 10, 3:53�pm, John McCabe wrote: >> Dear All >> >> The other day, some geezer who was presenting to me claimed that >> someone had carried out an analysis to show that, had the Ariane 5 >> software been written in C, the first launch would have succeeded. >> >> Are any of you aware of this claim and have information to debunk >> this? >> >> Thanks >> John > >Not aware of this claim and it's entirely hypothetical - you could >argue that if the C programmers had been 'average' C programmers, it >might not have got to the launch pad! That was the general view of me and one other non-anti-Ada person in the room :-) >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 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.