[Chicago] python 3.0 hep

[Ted Pollari]

On Dec 9, 2008, at 10:04 AM, Martin Maney wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 10:01:16AM -0800, Ted Pollari wrote:
>> are a large number of cases.  Making the jump to saying that the  
>> code has
>> no errors is either faulty logic or an intentional bit of  
>> exaggeration
>> for arguments' sake.
>
> But that's the only basis for arguing for testing in place of
> correctness proofs, which is the context.  Whether code needs to be
> really correct as opposed to working well enough is a different
> discussion.

It's a pragmatic decision because correctness proofs are themselves  
limited things made as pragmatic simplifications because of, you know,  
the halting problem -- total correctness is a tricky thing to prove,  
so you're left with partial correctness for most/many cases and that's  
fundamentally a pragmatic compromise.  So, if you're willing to make  
that compromise, you ought to be willing to consider further pragmatic  
compromises -- and pretending like your position isn't a pragmatic  
compromise is just silly.

-t