Re: non man rated booster compared to shuttle?

From: Peter Stickney (peter_at_adelphia.net)
Date: 08/19/04 

Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 23:10:22 -0400

In article <MPG.1b8dadeda3106c4b989cf0@news.rcn.com>,
        Kevin Willoughby <KevinWilloughby@acm.org.invalid> writes:
> In article <y1oUc.42963$n7.20159@fe37.usenetserver.com>,
> jeff.findley@ugs.nojunk.com says...
>> C isn't so bad, as long as you use a bit of discipline.
>
> We have literally decades of experience that says this just doesn't
> happen. At some point, you have to acknowledge that creating programs is
> a human activity and accept the frailties of humans.

Not at all. We've decades of experience that show that indisciplined
programming is a Bad Idea. I've never been a big fan of B&D languages
(Algol, Pascal, ADA) because they foster an attitude that the compiler
and other tools will catch all your little "whoopses". They don't
prevent foolishness. What they provide you with is internally
consistant foolishness.

What's more important than the particular toolset is the mindset.
This requires discipline and consistancy on the part of the Project
Leaders, and enforcement of same on the troops, Back in the Way Olde
Days, teaching discipline wasn't considered necessary. Programmers
came from disciplined fields - Bang It With a Hammer Engineering where
mistakes are expensive, and often dangerous, so they're thought
through ahead of time. This went away in the 1980s, when the schools
started putting out "Information Sciences" folks, with an apparent
emphasis on "design as you go" rather than a more organized approach.
If you ask me, that's the major cause of Code Bloat.

#define hacker_insult_comic YES
The differnece between a million monkeys coding ADA and a million
monkeys coding C is that the ADA monkeys will come up with a running
program.
#undef hacker_insult_comic

>
>
>> Decent
>> development houses use programs like lint to point out obvious screw-ups
>> that the compiler doesn't caer about.
>
> From personal experience: that helps a bit, but it is nowhere near good
> enough. A *lot* of problems can slip past lint and its successors.

Just out of curiosity, what platforms are you devl\eloping on -
Windows toolsets, particularly the Microsoft ones, stink on ice for
large projects.

 
>> The rest is
>> discipline on the part of the developer (and the person(s) doing the code
>> reviews).
>
> Code reviews are not common. They should be -- well-done reviews are
> demonstrably one of the best tools for improving quality.

A caveat - Well Done reviews to a well done design are the best tools. 

-- 
Pete Stickney
 A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
 bad measures.  -- Daniel Webster

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