I think correctness is achievable for a lot of things, but the industry at large isn't chasing it. People ask for a feature. How long does it take, how much does it cost? Dang, can we get it sooner?
Nobody ever asked me about what it takes to ensure it is correct. Nobody asked me to work with them to produce a detailed specification that exhaustively considers all cases that must be accounted for, nobody asked for a formal proof, nobody asked me to run a model checker, not even do something like design by contract. And when I look at job postings, all this stuff is completely absent. I was excited when I found one company that recognized Ada and Spark, and got me into an interview for mentioning them.
Just sprinkle some assert and make a few tests. If shit stick to ceiling, it's cooked. That's how the industry works.
We aren't even trying. It's pretty funny that everyone's making claims about what's possible when nobody is trying.
Yep, I bet there are niches, like in aerospace, where some try, and I'm sure some of them also succeed at correctness. We only hear about the failures.
Exactly. Correctness (and often mere robustness) is almost never a requirement, so it's never even attempted. There are industries where it is important and where it is done routinely, but evidently not in the places most HN commenters work. To say it's impossible probably sounds kind of silly to the engineers who are currently doing it.
Nobody ever asked me about what it takes to ensure it is correct. Nobody asked me to work with them to produce a detailed specification that exhaustively considers all cases that must be accounted for, nobody asked for a formal proof, nobody asked me to run a model checker, not even do something like design by contract. And when I look at job postings, all this stuff is completely absent. I was excited when I found one company that recognized Ada and Spark, and got me into an interview for mentioning them.
Just sprinkle some assert and make a few tests. If shit stick to ceiling, it's cooked. That's how the industry works.
We aren't even trying. It's pretty funny that everyone's making claims about what's possible when nobody is trying.
Yep, I bet there are niches, like in aerospace, where some try, and I'm sure some of them also succeed at correctness. We only hear about the failures.