Jim Balter wrote:
"Walter Bright" <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote in message
news:i2nkto$8u...@digitalmars.com...
bearophile wrote:
You have to think about proofs as another (costly) tool to avoid
bugs/bangs,
but not as the ultimate and only tool you have to use (I think
dsimcha was
trying to say that there are more costly-effective tools. This can be
true,
but you can't be sure that is right in general).
I want to re-emphasize the point that keeps getting missed.
Building reliable systems is not about trying to make components that
cannot fail. It is about building a system that can TOLERATE failure
of any of its components.
It's how you build safe systems from UNRELIABLE parts. And all parts
are unreliable. All of them. Really. All of them.
You're being religious about this and arguing against a strawman. While
all parts are unreliable, they aren't *equally* unreliable. Unit tests,
contract programming, memory safe access, and other reliability
techniques, *including correctness proofs*, all increase reliability.
I have to disagree with that. "Correctness proofs" are based on a total
fallacy. Attempting to proving that a program is correct (on a real
machine, as opposed to a theoretical one) is utterly ridiculous.
I'm genuinely astonished that such an absurd idea ever had any traction.
