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Re: Mathematica and Lisp
Posted:
Feb 6, 2013 1:51 AM
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In article <keqehj$erk$1@smc.vnet.net>,
Bill Rowe <readnews@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 2/3/13 at 8:22 PM, lvsaba@hotmail.com (Matthias Bode) wrote:
>
> >The fact that WRI does not even "recommend the use of the Product"
> >in instances where it could "threaten" ... "injury, or significant
> >loss" does indeed constitute a most serious limitation to "the
> >Product's" usefulness.
>
> Why do you reach the conclusion of "serious limitation"? All
> that is really happening here is Wolfram is essentially
> transferring legal responsibility for problems to the user. Not
> any different than is typical of software developers.
>
> I don't think you can find any software with comparable
> complexity/power to Mathematica that is bug free despite best
> effort/intention of the software developer/programmer. Given
> that, why would any software developer want to be held legally
> responsible for damage etc caused by a bug he failed to find.
>
> Expecting Wolfram to willingly accept legal responsibility for
> damages due to bugs in Mathematica is simply unrealistic. And it
> is equally unrealistic to expect a developer of any similar
> software to take willingly legal responsibility for damage
> caused by bugs.
Exactly. For a view of what it takes to make software almost bug-free,
look at the DO178 certification process, which is used for software that
controls airplanes - it the software fails, you lose the plane.
As one would expect, DO178 is *very* heavy, causing at least a factor of
ten cost increase. Or one hundred. If anything as complex as Mathematica
could be certified at all - the scaling is far from linear.
Joe Gwinn
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