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> but first make sure a top priority is program correctness That's the thing, this doesn't happen in real world and it is questionable if the concept of correc
by zzzcpan 8y ago
> but first make sure a top priority is program correctness
That's the thing, this doesn't happen in real world and it is questionable if the concept of correctness is useful at all. As it is based on unvalidated and incomplete assumptions about the world, never fully correct themselves. Sort of correctness of incorrectness.
- TooBrokeToBeg 8y agoPeople don't even think consistently, so correctness is an ever-moving target (aka a negotiation).
- perl4ever 8y agoCase in point: from reading discussions about the C standard, my impression is that a compliant compiler is "correct" if it reads your program that dereferences a null pointer and blows up the world.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIf a null pointer handler in a nuclear warhead firmware caused immediate detonation, that would certainly be correct according to C standard ;).
- mopierotti 8y agoCorrectness can just mean "does what it's intended to do". This is fairly unambiguous in cases such as if you intend to implement A* Search. If you hit a NPE and your program explodes, or if you aren't calling your heuristic (central to A*), then you have skimped on correctness. Furthermore, basically any time you hit something like a runtime error you likely did not intend to hit it. Therefore, regardless of problem domain, taking approaches that minimize these types of errors is an uncontroversial way that correctness can be prioritized.