> This plays into some recent conversations about "efficiency" vs "resilience."
Yup. And neither "efficiency" nor "resilience" will help you in the end if you don't ponder some important questions first. Like: "do we measure altitude in feet or meters?", or "should we check if the old guidance system will work okay in the new rocket?" - Klaus >> Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:06:16 +0100 >> From: k...@stock-consulting.com >> To: brin-l@mccmedia.com >> Subject: Re: Obama II >> >> > I know as a fact that the Defense Department said they >> > would require that all programming for applications they used would have to >> > be done in Ada (I think within 5 years) because Ada was a compiler that >> > automatically eliminated bugs. >> >> AFAIK, the Ada compiler can detect many programmer mistakes at compile >> time. Of course, one might say that Ada that's mainly because Ada >> imposes so many restrictions on the programmer that the chance to make >> mistakes is greatly increased (compared to more "relaxed" languages, >> which do, for example, implicit type conversion). Ada also supports >> run-time-checks - which detects bugs when it's already too late (or >> may even cause bugs in extreme cases). >> >> Compared to other languages of the time, like Fortran, it's clearly >> superior in detecting some classes of bugs early. It also reduces the >> programmer's efficiency, resulting the number of bugs per time compare >> to more efficient languages. >> >> However, the "best bugs" are introduced during programming, but much >> earlier. Catching bugs at the earliest possible time is expensive, but >> the ROI is immense and outweighs the cost by several orders of >> magnitude. Of course, any manager who was reading this dropped out at >> the word "expensive", so defective software will remain the standard. >> >> >> Okay, the word "standard" reminds to get back on-topic. I suspect that >> the reason for the choice of Ada was that Ada was the first >> standardized HL programming language. Oh, the military loves >> standards. No further explanation necessary. >> >> Best regards, Klaus >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com >> > > -- Best regards, Klaus mailto:k...@stock-consulting.com _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
