[Cryptography] Ada vs Rust vs safer C

Peter Gutmann pgut001 at cs.auckland.ac.nz
Wed Sep 21 11:33:09 EDT 2016


Arnold Reinhold <agr at me.com> writes:

>The literature on organizational behavior and even psychological abuse may be
>more relevant here than formal language design or type theory. (“You didn’t
>perform your overflow check in exactly the approved way, so you must be
>punished.” “We can’t change our standard because of computer designs from the
>1950s that were obsolete before work on C began.” “Other people will suffer
>if we make the changes you request.” An abuse counselor would have no
>difficulty recognizing the constructs.)

This is actually similar to a comment I made a few years ago on another list
about the computer-geek response to a problem where pilot over-use of rudder
controls could result in the vertical stabilizer becoming detached.  The FAA
response to this was that it was a one-off accident because the industry would
identify and correct the problem and make sure it never happened again.
Here's my sketch of the same issue if computer geeks were assigned to it:

Bugzilla Bug 123456: A300 vertical stabilizer falls off if rudder controls
  overused
April 2004: FIXME: Needs to be resolved
July 2005: I'm sorry, I can't reproduce this on my 737.
September 2005: Have you tried downloading the latest nightly build?
March 2006: OK, try it now.
October 2006: Resetting status due to new code release
May 2007: Are we sure this is a bug?  Isn't this pilot error?
May 2007 - June 2008: 57-page debate on whether it's pilot error.
November 2008: What about the following patch? <attachment>
December 2008: This doesn't comply with submission guidelines, correct and
  resubmit.
July 2009: Is anyone still working on getting this fixed?
February 2010: Could we get the UI guys to look at perhaps resolving this?
August 2010: This issue is clearly documented in the appendix to the apocrypha
  to the Howto, and therefore isn't a problem that needs addressing.
Resolved: Wontfix.

Although the above is intended as satire, it's scarily close to way too many
bugzilla threads I've followed.

Peter.


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