Python from Wise Guy's Viewpoint

[Terry Reedy]

"Markus Mottl" <markus at oefai.at> wrote in message
news:bn1017$m39$1 at bird.wu-wien.ac.at...
> Note that I am not defending ADA in any way or arguing against FPLs:
in
> fact, being an FPL-advocate myself I do think that FPLs (including
Lisp)
> have an edge what concerns writing safe code. But the Ariane-example
just
> doesn't support this claim. It was an absolutely horrible management
> mistake to not check old code for compliance with the new spec. End
> of story...

The investigating commission reported about 5 errors that, in series,
allowed the disaster.  As I remember, another nonprogrammer/language
one was in mockup testing.  The particular black box, known to be
'good', was not included, but just simulated according to its expected
behavior.  If it has been included, and a flight similated in real
time with appropriate tilting and shaking, it should probably have
given the spurious abort message that it did in the real flight.

TJR