27 Sep
2014
27 Sep
'14
3:36 p.m.
On 09/27/2014 02:19 PM, Richard wrote:
In article
<1622761209.431415.1411848409762.JavaMail.root at md02.topaz.synacor.com>,
ANDY HOLT <andy.holt at tesco.net> writes:
Way back when, I think it was IEEE Computer had an article entitled
something to the theme of "Looking for the Silver Bullet". That was
easily 20 years ago and the situation has not improved one bit.
Witness, for example, the 25-year-or-so just-discovered vulnerability
bug in bash. Used in millions of computers. It probably wasn't
considered a bug 25 years ago, given that there was no way to exploit it.
Things change.
--Chuck
Dijkstra's key interest was proving program
correctness (he was a
mathematician). All the stated languages had features that made this
difficult - if not outright impossible.
Proving program correctness was, and remains, a pipe dream.