Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven.umd.edu!mimsy!care.cs.umd.edu!cml From: cml@care.cs.umd.edu (Christopher Lott) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: bridge building (was Re: Documenting OO Systems) Message-ID: <33846@mimsy.umd.edu> Date: 2 May 91 00:59:44 GMT References: <1259@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM> <9105012313.AA23259@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu Reply-To: cml@care.cs.umd.edu (Christopher Lott) Distribution: na Organization: University of Maryland Dept of Computer Science Lines: 31 >In article <> chrisp@regenmeister.EBay.Sun.COM (Chris Prael) writes: >If you can't engineer software well in C, you can't engineer software >well period! In article <> koehnema@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Harry Koehnemann) replies: >Tell that to AT&T after their 1-800 blunder. That error would have been >less likely in different language (like Ada - I had to say that.). This is a red herring. I assume you refer to the failure of switching software that resulted from a missing "break" statement. We can go around and around, arguing that this was caused by the use of C, but it's not IMHO productive to do so. There are classes of faults that are more prevalent in some languages than others. I'm not proficient enough in Ada to give a counter example, and actually it's better that I don't, because that would just set off more flame wars. Let's discuss how we can identify these classes of faults, so we are able to say before code reviews "watch out for this class of mistakes." What are the classes of faults which occur most often in your environment? How expensive are they to identify, fix? (In the previous red herring, due to the application, pretty darned expensive if missed.) I agree with Chris Prael's first comment - the syntax and low-level issues of your development language are important, but other issues dominate. chris... -- Christopher Lott \/ Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 cml@cs.umd.edu /\ 4122 AV Williams Bldg 301 405-2721