re-writing college books - erm.. ahm...

[crispin at novell.com (Crispin Cowan)]

Gadi Evron wrote:
> So, "dump C", "Use SML", "What secure coding classes are you doing?" and
> "we are already doing it!!" are the responses I got when I started this
> thread.
>   
What did you expect from whining about the generally poor quality of
software? :)

> Can someone mention again why re-writing the main often-used and probably
> less than 3 mostly-used basic programming books is a bad idea?
>   
Uh ... 'cause I question the assertion that there are 3 mostly-used
basic programming books. I suspect it is more like 78 mostly used books.
More importantly, if there are 3 mostly used books, then there are 78
more behind them vying for those 3 slots, and they all have the same
problems. If you write a new book, then you just join the pool of 78,
and you have the impact of a drop in the bucket.

Worse, we are talking about correctness here. Correctness is hard, and
correctness on a large scale is harder. I doubt that even a concerted
effort at a "correct" book on intro to programming would manage to
actually be correct any time before the 3rd edition, 10 years from now.

Seeking perfect correctness as an approach to security is a fool's
errand. Security is designing systems that can tolerate imperfect software.

Crispin

-- 
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.                      http://crispincowan.com/~crispin/
Director of Software Engineering, Novell  http://novell.com
     Hack: adroit engineering solution to an unanticipated problem
     Hacker: one who is adroit at pounding round pegs into square holes