[SystemSafety] Bossavit's Leprechauns book

[Derek M Jones]

Peter,

For someone interested in accuracy, you understanding of the
conversation is rather inaccurate:

> * "Formal methods don't work"

Formal methods are oversold.

> * "Formal methods take up resources in development and don't pay them back in increased SW quality"

The cost/benefit of formal methods in comparison to other techniques
is not known.

> * "You cannot evaluate software quality statistically"

Software quality is a meaningless term.

> * "C is as good as any other procedural language for writing critical software"

What does "as good as" mean?

C is no different than any other language...

> * "You don't need a language to enforce strong data typing because your static analysis tools can
> check if there could/would be type violations"

The enforcement of strong typing is static analysis.
The only difference is that the compiler does it, rather than
another tool.

I am a fan of strong typing, so I would slightly disagree with this
statement.

> * "We can write better standards for critical SWE than what is there already"

Obviously.

> * "Coding standards are not helpful"

Most current coding standards are not helpful.


-- 
Derek M. Jones           Software analysis
tel: +44 (0)1252 520667  blog:shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com