Xref: utzoo comp.software-eng:2990 comp.lang.c:26453
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!mrsvr.UUCP
From: mcilree@mrsvr.UUCP (Robert McIlree)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Errors aren't that simple
Message-ID: <2272@mrsvr.UUCP>
Date: 1 Mar 90 21:40:19 GMT
References: <12643@ulysses.att.com>
Sender: news@mrsvr.UUCP
Followup-To: comp.software-eng
Lines: 51

From article <12643@ulysses.att.com>, by ekrell@ulysses.att.com (Eduardo Krell):
> In article <8192@hubcap.clemson.edu> billwolf%hazel.cs.clemson.edu@hubcap.clemson.edu writes:
>>   For the cost of simply
>>   the recent national AT&T crash, I'd be willing to conjecture that all of 
>>   AT&T's software developers could have been trained in software engineering
>>   concepts and the Ada language, and supplied with Ada compilers as well.   
> 
> And what makes you think the network wouldn't have crashed if the software
> had been written in Ada (you seem to imply this)? Do you know the details
> of the cause of the crash?. You're just speculating that it was related
> to the "unsafe" nature of C.

Let me add something to Eduardo's comments: The vast majority, if not
all, of AT&T's developers *are* trained in software engineering
concepts in-house. I know. I used to work at Bell Labs.  I learned
more about software engineering, methodologies, and development
lifecycles from that environment than in any other place I've worked,
before or since. At a minimum, that training was far better than what
it appears you have learned at Duke (bastion of CS that it is), Mr.
Wolfe - if simply by judging the quality of the school from your postings
of absolute conjecture and crap.

Oh, is the above a little unfair? Well, so is your indictment of C
without: a) facts and b) experience. Programming languages are not
the root of all evil. Failures are also linked to inadequate analysis,
lack of testing, poor development environments, and documentation
problems, to name a few. I'll reiterate to you that systems are not,
and never are 100% reliable. The AT&T crash was bound to happen
sooner or later, but not because the software was coded in C. Things
like software complexity and network topology issues come to mind
immediately, with nothing at all to do with language specificity.
Perhaps you can take the time to put down the Ada manual and learn
something about these topics, because the lack of depth in your
pronouncements is showing.

Unfortunately, very little of the drivel you have posted in these
forums touch on non-coding parts of the development lifecycle. You,
for one reason or another, simply ignore them and keep thumping your
Ada bible like some evangelical idiot. Ignorance of those topics
doesn't make you a software engineer. At best, it makes you a coder.
And coders, Mr. Wolfe, are a dime-a-dozen. So are religous wars on
which programming languages are "the best." If you're going to indict
the software engineering community for your percieved attrocities
and ignorace, perhaps you could start at the top - like in requirements
and management issues, which is where the majority of the problems
start. Blasting Joe-C-Programmer for the world's ills is just so much
hot air - which is to be expected from you, I'd reckon.



Bob McIlree