Re: How to develop a random number generation device

On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:21:24 -0700, MooseFET <kensmith@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Sep 9, 1:48 pm, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[....]
Watch dogs don't always recover the system from a glitch. If you are
storing data in battery back RAM or flash, you need to be sure that
wrong values don't cause things to hang in some non-recoverable way.

One of my programming rules is that data should never be able to crash
code.


The assignment statement is more dangerous than a GOTO.

Assignments don't crash in assembly, since assembly is untyped. The
only math error possible is a divide-by-zero trap, or a stupid
pointer. What's important is that program flow doesn't bomb just
because some cal table is trashed.

There's nothing wrong with GOTO; hell, Dijkstra didn't even have
regular access to a computer, and didn't actually program much. I
think in state machines, so GOTO is perfectly logical. In assembly, a
conditional branch, or a computed/table driven jump, are the primary
control structures.

Nested curly brackets are just as dangerous, or moreso.

John

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