From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Path: eternal-september.org!reader01.eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!aioe.org!peer01.ams4!peer.am4.highwinds-media.com!peer01.iad!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!fx45.iad.POSTED!not-for-mail Subject: Re: Not to incite a language war but apparently the Corona lockdown was based on 13 year old undocumented C-Code Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada References: From: Rick Newbie User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.7.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 11 May 2020 21:12:21 UTC Date: Mon, 11 May 2020 14:12:21 -0700 X-Received-Bytes: 3571 X-Received-Body-CRC: 2371213169 Xref: reader01.eternal-september.org comp.lang.ada:58651 Date: 2020-05-11T14:12:21-07:00 List-Id: 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