Ed Kyle ) wrote:

: Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
: Ed Kyle wrote:
: Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
:
: Ed Kyle wrote:
:
:
: The reported facts about DART are consistent with a software
: issue of some kind. Software fails when it has not been
: adequately tested.
:
: No, software usually continues to execute, or executes to completion,
: in which case the end state may or may not result in a lock up,
: or an infinite loop.
:
: Usually it's the software engineers that fail.
:
:
: Program managers who fail to test to find faults in
: complex software are the ones who should be blamed.
:
: Actually it's mathematics and nature itself that is to blame,
: that pesky two to the power of two recursively iterated thing.
:
: No software engineer can design perfect algorithims that
: work perfectly in every circumstance, especially when
: the circumstance is rangefinding and/or pattern recognition
: in low earth orbit using detectors and guidance systems
: that may have originally been designed for other purposes
: and were brought together in a hurry on a limited budget
: and tight schedule.
:
: Your lack of understanding of software and hardware is stunning.
:
: But by all means, keep posting about something you know little about!

: I see that you've done a little JavaScript coding on your
: web page, so I assume you are aware that software
: can fail without entering a recursive loop. A simple
: problem like that would be caught during basic
: debugging. The real killer failures, the ones that don't
: appear unless conditions are "just so", may not make
: themselves apparent without a well-designed system-
: level testing effort.

Not pick nits but the word is 'iterative' rather than 'reursive', as the
latter is altogether something else. Recursion has it own problems, but
tends not to be the same as an infinite loop (i.e. condition never being
met to break out of a loop).

Eric

: - Ed Kyle