[SystemSafety] C for OSs

[Gergely Buday]

"The problem is the industry was flooded with a huge number of self-taught
programmers."

What book should we base the teaching of software engineers? Where is the
holy grail of true software engineering?

- Gergely

Chris Hills <safetyyork at phaedsys.com> ezt írta (időpont: 2019. szept. 15.,
V 19:40):

> Hi,
>
>
>
> (catching up which is what Sunday afternoons are for)
>
>
>
> I have often said at conferences, much to Rod’s horror, that C can be made
> as good as SPARK.  I then start going through some of the things you are
> going to have to do to subset and sort out on the way  when I usually get
> interrupted by someone (other than Rod) to say “wouldn’t it be easier to
> use SPARK in the first place?”  To which the answer is “yes”
>
>
>
> The problem is not technical in the way most think.
>
>
>
> As Derek Jones said early on in this “Another way of looking at this is
> as a statistical sampling problem. If the most heavily used OSs are written
> in X, then X will experience the most faults.” So we should be careful
> what, and how we are measuring these things.
>
> And as David MENTRÉ said:-  As usual, the problem is more social than
> technical: people don't want to change their habits, because they cannot
> due to external constraints, or think they cannot due to external
> constraints.
>
>
>
> So 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.
>
> As an aside I now say “critical software” and explain that safety,
> security, mission or commercially critical are all the same. Unless your
> brief is to write buggy and incomplete code…
>
>
>
> You can write bad software in most languages.  Simply relying on the
> language implementation tools as a primary (and often only method)   to
> stop the developers doing something silly is not really a good idea.
>
> I once had to work in Modula 2  “because Mod2 had an ISO standard” and was
> “good” this was the year before the ISO C standard. However the 3 compilers
> we had for Modula 2 has some major differences and some serious faults.  So
> whist the theoretical language was “good” the implementation was dangerous.
>
>
> What is needed is a complete change in the way software is developed at a
> social level.
>
> I blame Clive Sinclair.
>
> When he flooded the UK with home computers anyone who could copy type a
> program from “your ZX80”  magazine into their Sinclair ZX80 and get it to
> run was A Programmer.  If you could modify it and it still ran you were A
> GURU.   The problem is the industry was flooded with a huge number of
> self-taught programmers.  Where in the land of the blind a one eyed man is
> king.  Many of the bad habits and attitudes in software can be traced back
> to the 1980’s  and 90’s.  Many can still be seen alive and well 40+ years
> on.
>
> If we solved that problem software would be far more reliable and the
> differences between C programs and SPARK  programs would be an order of
> magnitude (or two) less.   They would still be there but you have to ask
> would C 90 have been allowed to run off in to  C99 and C11 without first
> fixing the problems in C90
>
> Regards
>
>    Chris
>
>
>
> Phaedrus Systems Ltd
>
> FREEphone 0808 1800 358    International +44 1827 259 546
> Vat GB860621831  Co Reg #04120771
> Http://www.phaedsys.com <http://www.phaedsys.com/>  chills at phaedsys.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* systemsafety [mailto:
> systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] *On Behalf Of *Olwen
> Morgan
> *Sent:* Monday, September 9, 2019 11:14 AM
> *To:* systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
> *Subject:* Re: [SystemSafety] C for OSs
>
>
>
> For the avoidance of doubt, *IMO you cannot equal SPARK Ada code quality
> in C*. I've only ever said that you can approach it (albeit, I'm
> confident, fairly closely) by using different best-of-breed tools and
> exercising a severe coding discipline that takes a long time - and perhaps
> a peculiar mindset - to acquire.
>
> And all that hassle really shouldn't be necessary in the first place.
>
> Olwen
>
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