RE: Re: [fpc-pascal] Need three things
Real world need for DbC, or some way to show due diligence: http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2007/08/10/house-of-lords-inquiry-personal-internet-security/ Quote: "The third area, and this is where the committee has been most far-sighted, and therefore in the short term this may well be their most controversial recommendation, is that they wish to see a software liability regime, viz: that software companies should become responsible for their security failures. "and in practice it may be a decade or two before theres sufficient case law for vendors to know quite where they stand if they ship a product with a buffer overflow, or a race condition, or just a default password" Competitive advantage to be exploited here. James ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] Competitive advantage in showing proof of correctness
There's a company already doing that: http://www.praxis-his.com/sparkada/intro.asp I've read their book. Cool stuff. James ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] Competitive advantage in showing proof of correctness
Let's first get people of type unsafe languages. Type safety with range checking etc. are a big improvement over type unsafe languages. Yes, Pascal is already the language to use if you are interrested in software correctness. And perhaps Tom Verhoeff's work will lead to contract programming. But I don't believe it will be a requirement for FPC, as after decades, very few people have an interrest in correctness of their programs. Lastly, pre and post conditions are just another runtime check. Checks can be used to show the existance of bugs, but not their absence. Well, I know programmers who turn off range checking and let exceptions fall through empty exception blocks. They don't work with me on projects. My guess is that this is a business issue that will be decided for programmers, not by programmers. Additionally, it's not an issue of absolutes, but of due diligence. Once the bar is raised on what due diligence means for software developers, they'll accept it because they have to. Before completely dismissing this issue, I hope you guys will consider merging Tom's qualified work into the trunk at some point. James ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
Re: [fpc-pascal] Competitive advantage in showing proof of correctness
Of course it will be considered. I don't think we are there yet though. First, Tom needs to say he is ready for merging though. Second we need to do some peer review on the code. However, I don't think anyone in the team is again his work. Excellent, thanks Daniël. James ___ fpc-pascal maillist - fpc-pascal@lists.freepascal.org http://lists.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/fpc-pascal
