> A programmer wrote things in a specific order for a specific reason. Is it not possible that the programmer introduced a bug? Consider the bug that caused t

> A programmer wrote things in a specific order for a specific reason. Is it not possible that the programmer introduced a bug? Consider the bug that caused the 911 glitch in Android phones recently. An unstable comparator was defined in a type, violating the contract that Comparable has with Java's sorting algorithms. When Java detects that this implementation violates the assumptions its sorting algorithms make, it throws an exception. Should it not do this and instead say that the programmer wrote that specific comparator on purpose and it should loop forever or produce an incorrect sort? I think most people would say "no". So why is the contract around pointer dereferencing meaningfully different?