5 ms·

Regressions are not implied by that statement. A bug doesn’t exist in the human realm until a human observes it.

by CodeWriter23 2y ago

senorrib 2y ago
Oh, the Schrodinger's Bug.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- p-e-w 2y ago
  Schrödinger's Hubris, actually. The claim that a codebase of 420k lines contains "only one error" is of course absurd, and the members of this forum would laugh anyone out of the room who made such a claim about any other project, pointing out how they cannot possibly know, actual logical contradictions in the claims as described by GP, or just plain ridiculing it without further elaboration. But since the code in question cannot meaningfully be tested by the public, and people have been indoctrinated to believe the myth that aerospace engineers are an entirely different species that doesn't make mistakes in the sense that the rest of the workforce does, the hubris is accepted until disproven, which it probably won't be for various practical reasons. Nevermind that the Space Shuttle was a death trap that killed two crews, and that the associated investigations (especially for Challenger) revealed numerous serious issues in quality and safety management. People will continue to just nod their head when they hear nonsense like this, because that's what they have seen others do, and so Schrödinger's Hubris can live on.
  - avs733 2y ago
    maybe just labeling it journalistic license would be simpler and more accurate. I doubt any of the people who actually write the code would stand by when that claim was made and not clarify it to 'we only found one bug'.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
odyssey7 2y ago
“Program testing can be used to create 1 the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence” 1) edited
- adrianN 2y ago
  That is wrong in general. With enough tests you absolutely can show the absence of bugs for certain programs. It is for example easy to test „hello world“ exhaustively.
  - mgsouth 2y ago
    Let's say you've tested this thing 1 million times. Each time the output was automatically checked by five different and independently-developed test suites. You're ready to swear there's no possible way for it to fail. And then someone tries it with a ulimit of 16kB. Does it run? Do you _know_? Do you even know what is correct behavior in this situation?
    - adrianN 2y ago
      The system it runs on is part of the specification. A program is correct if fulfills all specified requirements. You're saying a car is defective because it breaks when you put sugar in the tank.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - odyssey7 2y ago
        This is a no true Scotsman fallacy. Any time it runs incorrectly, it was invoked with the wrong operating conditions — which seem to be defined as any conditions that cause it to run incorrectly. Sugar in the tank is an agreeable example because of how obvious it is, but what about something more subtle? An odd condition that leads to the wrong resonant frequency. An unknown software bug that makes the brakes lock up on Tuesdays at 12:00 AM on one specific backroad in a remote part of Virginia. The combinatorial possibilities of operating conditions are too numerous to exhaustively test. I guess you could say that every function has every quality that it happens to have, so that functions need only exist in order to be “correct.”
mercer 2y ago
heisenbugs

Regressions are not implied by that statement. A bug doesn’t exist in the human realm until a human observes it.

senorrib 2y ago

Oh, the Schrodinger's Bug.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
p-e-w 2y ago
Schrödinger's Hubris, actually. The claim that a codebase of 420k lines contains "only one error" is of course absurd, and the members of this forum would laugh anyone out of the room who made such a claim about any other project, pointing out how they cannot possibly know, actual logical contradictions in the claims as described by GP, or just plain ridiculing it without further elaboration. But since the code in question cannot meaningfully be tested by the public, and people have been indoctrinated to believe the myth that aerospace engineers are an entirely different species that doesn't make mistakes in the sense that the rest of the workforce does, the hubris is accepted until disproven, which it probably won't be for various practical reasons. Nevermind that the Space Shuttle was a death trap that killed two crews, and that the associated investigations (especially for Challenger) revealed numerous serious issues in quality and safety management. People will continue to just nod their head when they hear nonsense like this, because that's what they have seen others do, and so Schrödinger's Hubris can live on.
- avs733 2y ago
  maybe just labeling it journalistic license would be simpler and more accurate. I doubt any of the people who actually write the code would stand by when that claim was made and not clarify it to 'we only found one bug'.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

odyssey7 2y ago

“Program testing can be used to create 1 the presence of bugs, but never to show their absence” 1) edited

adrianN 2y ago
That is wrong in general. With enough tests you absolutely can show the absence of bugs for certain programs. It is for example easy to test „hello world“ exhaustively.
- mgsouth 2y ago
  Let's say you've tested this thing 1 million times. Each time the output was automatically checked by five different and independently-developed test suites. You're ready to swear there's no possible way for it to fail. And then someone tries it with a ulimit of 16kB. Does it run? Do you _know_? Do you even know what is correct behavior in this situation?
  - adrianN 2y ago
    The system it runs on is part of the specification. A program is correct if fulfills all specified requirements. You're saying a car is defective because it breaks when you put sugar in the tank.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - odyssey7 2y ago
      This is a no true Scotsman fallacy. Any time it runs incorrectly, it was invoked with the wrong operating conditions — which seem to be defined as any conditions that cause it to run incorrectly. Sugar in the tank is an agreeable example because of how obvious it is, but what about something more subtle? An odd condition that leads to the wrong resonant frequency. An unknown software bug that makes the brakes lock up on Tuesdays at 12:00 AM on one specific backroad in a remote part of Virginia. The combinatorial possibilities of operating conditions are too numerous to exhaustively test. I guess you could say that every function has every quality that it happens to have, so that functions need only exist in order to be “correct.”

mercer 2y ago

heisenbugs