assume, assert, enforce, @safe

[Sean Kelly via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 18 September 2014 at 16:55:33 UTC, H. S. Teoh via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
> Seriously, this philosophy of ignoring supposedly "minor" bugs 
> in
> software is what led to the sad state of software today, where 
> nothing
> is reliable and people have come to expect that software will 
> inevitably
> crash, and that needing to reboot an OS every now and then just 
> to keep
> things working is acceptable. Yet, strangely enough, people 
> will scream
> bloody murder if a car behaved like that.

A car did behave like that--the Toyota Prius.  It would randomly 
accelerate out of control because of a bug in the car's software. 
  People died.  And yes, bloody murder was screamed.

I used to work for the telephone company, and telcos are a bit 
weird because they're considered an essential service.  If 
martial law were enacted in the US, telephone workers would still 
be allowed on the street because the telephone system must work.  
There was one instance when I was working that I had to get to 
the switch for maintenance during a horrible storm where the 
police had closed the roads.  No problem--they let me through.  
Network services are rapidly approaching this point.  People 
depend on the internet for communication these days as much or 
more than they do on telephone calls.  I suspect/hope that it 
won't be long before communications software is held to standards 
similar to telephone, which will require a huge adjustment on the 
part of programmers.  People in this industry still tend to not 
think of things in terms of 5+ "nines" of uptime for their 
service, despite that being the expectation of their users.