Re: Not to incite a language war but apparently the Corona lockdown was based on 13 year old undocumented C-Code

[Rick Newbie <nuttin@nuttn.nowhere>]

I think the blog article is more about the general mindset behind this. 
Of course a C program can be correct. So can an assembler program. That 
does not mean that it is very likely to be correct. I think we all agree 
that language features can be a big help in writing correct programs.

But even if the program was correct and produces "correct" results for 
the data put in, that does not mean that the algorithms themselves are 
correct and will produce results that correlate with reality. I don't 
even want to go into the general merit of "prediction software" and the 
many examples of failed predictions from a new ice age, over global 
warming to just climate change or the stock market crashes that 
surprised everybody and that were made worse by auto-sales triggers.

But what if you realize that your software isn't producing "correct" 
results and you want to correct your code and you just don't understand 
it anymore? What do you do then? I have been there. I am maintaining a 
software system in C++ that is 15 years old now with many flaws albeit 
commented, not bugs but quirks. I have to tell the users "sorry, I don't 
dare change anything because I'm afraid I might break more things than I 
can fix" because it is simply unnecessarily complex, and luckily my 
users understand, but I'm being honest here. That's the point. You gotta 
be honest about the flaws of your system and yourself, and I believe 
that's what the author of the blog is mostly criticizing, that 
Mr.Ferguson is narcissistic and insisted on the correctness of his 
models for selfish reasons.

So there are multiple levels to this catastrophe, the language is one 
and the personality of the author is another one. Not the least of 
course the readiness of governments all over the world to accept the 
predictions of a computer model they don't understand (and presumably 
their own "experts" did not understand either) and to destroy the 
economy based on the blind believe that "the computer" knows best 
because it can not fail.

That's the real tragedy here. Sure a well written program with comments 
to make it easy to understand in a peer review would have helped, but I 
doubt even then the outcome would have been much different. I know the 
flaws of software because I write software. Politicians don't write 
software and so they are less well equipped to see the danger from those 
models.

When I read "15000 lines of undocumented C-Code" that was for me the 
icing on the cake. I mean it's software, yea it can work or maybe not, 
but with C-Code we have a greater chance to have unmaintainable problems 
that go unnoticed.

Rick