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

[Niklas Holsti <niklas.holsti@tidorum.invalid>]

On 2020-05-17 2:54, Optikos wrote:
> On Saturday, May 16, 2020 at 5:31:17 PM UTC-5, Niklas Holsti wrote:
>> On 2020-05-11 21:49, Rick Newbie wrote:
>>> This link is probably not reported in the MSM very much but I think it's
>>> relevant. Not that I believe that Ada would have magically made
>>> everything better, but to base the decision to destroy the Western
>>> economies on code written in the C language that isn't even commented is
>>> somewhat out of dystopian fantasy. There's a reason C is not used in
>>> safety critical applications.
>>> I want to share this article here before it gets buried in the memory hole
>>>
>>>
>>> https://chrisvoncsefalvay.com/2020/05/09/imperial-covid-model/
>>
>> A post on comp.risks points to a different opinion, which includes a
>> discussion of why the above "review" is mistaken:
>>
>>   
>> https://philbull.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/why-you-can-ignore-reviews-of-scientific-code-by-commercial-software-developers/amp/
>>
>> Some of the points made were already made in the comp.lang.ada
>> discussion, but there are also others.
> 
> (sigh) Code smells in the source code are code smells in the source
> code itself, regardless of whomever the speaker is and regardless of
> whichever imprimatur of letters do or don't follow their name.
So what? Smelly code can be correct, too.

> Niklas, you really are defending some sort of elite priesthood that
> lesser unwashed masses shall be unworthy to critique.  ... Hopefully
> your URLs will spark greater productive debate instead of stifle it.

Ferguson's code can be discussed from three aspects:

1. Whether the code is readable, well documented, well modularized, 
etc., that is, whether the code is sweet-smelling. It seems pointless to 
discuss, in comp.lang.ada, these issues for a specific program, unless 
the program's properties are taken as examples of some general things, 
for example Ada-vs-C differences. It also seems pointless to discuss 
here the practices of scientific programming in general, unless some 
issues relevant to Ada can be found there.

2. Whether the code correctly implements the epidemiological models and 
the particular assumptions for covid-19 that Ferguson's group has made. 
This we discussed. Some bugs in the program have been found, but they 
appear not to have large impact on the results, at least not on the 
statistical results. This is clearly relevant to comp.lang.ada, as 
possibly illuminating the bug-resistance properties of C/C++ and Ada. 
However, the examples of bugs that were discussed could as well have 
happened in Ada as in C or C++, unless one assumes that Ada programmers 
are generally more careful than C/C++ programmers.

3. Whether the epidemiological models and assumptions of Ferguson's 
group are correct for SARS-COV-2 and covid-19, and whether the 
lock-downs are good or bad. This is entirely irrelevant to 
comp.lang.ada, but it seemed to be what you wanted to discuss. A deep 
sigh from me, too.

-- 
Niklas Holsti

niklas holsti tidorum fi
       .      @       .