Barrapunto

Je, justo la complejidad del código era un argumento en contra de la Iniciativa de Defensa Estrátegica de Reagan y ahora de la defensa antimisiles de Bush:
Risks 21.43:

The individual essays explain:

    1. The fundamental technological differences between software engineering and other areas of engineering and why software is unreliable;
    2. The properties of the proposed SDI software that make it unattainable;
    3. Why the techniques commonly used to build military software are inadequate for this job;
    4. The nature of research in software engineering, and why the improvements that it can effect will not be sufficient to allow xonstruction of a truly reliable strategic defense system;
    5. Why I do not expect research in artificial intelligence to help in building reliable military software;
    6. Why I do not expect research in automatic programming to bring about the substantial improvements that are needed;
    7. Why program verification (mathematical proofs of correctness) cannot give us a reliable strategic defense battle-management system;
    8. Why military funding of research in software and other aspects of computing science is inefficient and ineffective.

Have we really made sufficient advances in software engineering--in the way we build large systems, in reliability, in safety, in testability--so that this kind of project is more workable now than it was 18 years ago? Would
David Parnas be less likely to resign from such an advisory panel today?