Re: Ariane5 FAQ

[Berend de Boer <berend@xsol.com>]

>>>>> "Robert" == Robert I Eachus <rieachus@attbi.com> writes:

    Robert> Berend de Boer wrote:
    >> Except requirements it seems. And I think you should have a
    >> look at Design By Contract and in particular Eiffel.

    Robert> No.  And that is what all the sound and fury has been
    Robert> about.  The mapping from requirements to actual code was
    Robert> perfectly done.  The problem was that the requirements
    Robert> which were perfectly filled were for the Ariane 4, not the
    Robert> Ariane 5.

    Robert> The nature of the political/management problem at
    Robert> Arianespace was such that no one ever saw both the Ariane
    Robert> 5 requirements and the SRI documentation until after the
    Robert> disaster.

The point is that the requirements should be *in the code*. That's
where they belong. Not sure if this would have made a difference, but
if you want to reuse code, you should now the conditions under which
it should work. If programmers just grab code and reuse it without
looking at those preconditions, well, you're not doing your job right.

And for those preconditions: use comments, DbC, whatever. And Ada has
even Spark (that's something we need in the Eiffel world!).

-- 
Regards,

Berend. (-: