RE: SPI, Ounce Labs Target Poorly Written Code

["Peter Amey" <peter.amey () praxis-cs co uk>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Behalf Of Blue Boar
> Sent: 28 June 2004 21:35
> To: Kenneth R. van Wyk
> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [SC-L] SPI, Ounce Labs Target Poorly Written Code
>
>
> Kenneth R. van Wyk wrote:
> > The article quotes SPI Dynamics' CTO 
> > as saying, "It doesn't require developers to learn about 
> security," which 
> > strikes me as being a rather bold statement.
>
> I seriously doubt that there is a programming language that can do 
> anything useful that one can't do something stupid with.  Never bet 
> against the quality of idiots available in the world. :)

Always willing to rise to a challenge.  But I'll cover my bets by slightly changing Blue Boar's words by adding "which 
wouldn't be obvious".  

I would assert that using SPARK it is very /hard/ to something stupid and /impossible/ to do something stupid that 
wouldn't be obvious to the SPARK Examiner tool.  In fact, the only way I can think of doing so would be to construct a 
formal specification for stupidity and then correctly implement it (which is clearly feasible).  

The first part of your challenge "that can do anything useful" is proved by the existence of real, useful prgorams 
written in SPARK.

Peter


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