There is nothing a mere scientist can say that will stand against the flood of a hundred million dollars. But there is one quality that cannot be purchased in this way — and that is reliability. The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity. It is a price which the very rich find most hard to pay.
#hoar #computer-science #programming #quality #safety #reliability #price #simplicity #software
New edition of Wirth’s book Project Oberon is out. It describes not only built from scratch software(entire operating system and compiler), but design of the hardware as well.
The vast complexity of popular operating systems makes them not only obscure, but also provides opportunities for “back doors”. They allow external agents to introduce spies and devils unnoticed by the user, making the system attackable and corruptible. The only safe remedy is to build a safe system anew from scratch.
http://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/index.html
#oberon #wirth #niklaus-wirth #risc #programming #fpga #books #programming-languages #compilers #operating-systems #compiler #freedom #design #security #privacy #surveillance #reliability
