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From: alesha@auto-trol.com (Alec Sharp)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: bridge building (was Re: Documenting OO Systems)
Message-ID: <1991May3.234349.14026@auto-trol.com>
Date: 3 May 91 23:43:49 GMT
References: <1259@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM> <9105012313.AA23259@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> <1991May3.142824.208@keinstr.uucp>
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In article <1991May3.142824.208@keinstr.uucp> chaplin@keinstr.uucp (chaplin) writes:
>In article <9105012313.AA23259@enuxha.eas.asu.edu> koehnema@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Harry Koehnemann) writes:
>>In article <1259@grapevine.EBay.Sun.COM> chrisp@regenmeister.EBay.Sun.COM (Chris Prael) writes:
>>>If you can't engineer software well in C, you can't engineer software
>>>well period!
>>>
>>
>>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.).
>>
>>Harry Koehnemann
>>koehnema@enuxha.eas.asu.edu
>
>Baloney!  Read what Chris Prael said!  The fact that it is *possible* to
>engineer software well in *any* language does not mean that well-engineered
>software is guaranteed.  Perhaps the blunder would not have happened had
>AT&T used Ada, but using Ada would not have guaranteed that the blunder would
>not have happened.

All this talk about C and software engineering reminds me of the NRA 
argument - guns aren't dangerous, people are dangerous.  Sure, you can
do software engineering in C, but most people don't.  Maybe the people
defending C as a software engineering tool force themselves to abide
by various conventions but most people I've worked with don't.  In my
experience there are too many hackers out there, and they love C
because it let's them hack.

So, are they the dangerous ones, or is it C that's dangerous because
it lets them skip the software engineering part of things and go 
straight to the serious hacking part.

Of course, I'm sure all you fellow posters are very responsible
with your guns, and I'm sure you impose a lot of discipline on
your C development.  I'm just not sure about all the others out there.

Incidentally, C is my favorite language, and I've never worked with
Ada, so I'm not biased.  I just happen to think that C only works with
software engineering if discipline is mixed in, and this seems to be a
commodity in short supply, certain among most of the software 
developers I've worked with in the last ten years.

So, people being people, I sort of figure I'm safer if no one has
guns, and I sort of figure people do better software engineering if
they have a language more conducive to it than C.

Alec Sharp
-- 
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