[SystemSafety] C for OSs

Martyn Thomas martyn at thomas-associates.co.uk
Sun Sep 15 21:40:12 CEST 2019


On 15/09/2019 16:13, Chris Hills wrote:

> o simply changing the language used is not going to stop the problem,
> merely change it.  Going back to my first point about C and SPARK.  If
> programmers were Software Engineers and properly engineered software
> (which is a social problem)   things would be very different and all
> software would be written as though it was for a critical system.


Or as Tony Hoare wrote many years ago:

/We are like the barber-surgeons of earlier ages, who prided themselves//
//on the sharpness of their knives and the speed with which they//
//dispatched their duty -- either shaving a beard or amputating a limb.//
//Imagine the dismay with which they greeted some ivory-towered academic//
//who told them that the practice of surgery should be based on a long and//
//detailed study of human anatomy, on familiarity with surgical procedures//
//pioneered by great doctors of the past, and that it should be carried//
//out only in a strictly controlled bug-free environment, far removed from//
//the hair and dust of the normal barber's shop./


Martyn

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