[C-safe-secure-studygroup] Fwd: [trustable-software] Open Source Deterministic Programming standard... Help Wanted

[Fulvio Baccaglini]

Hi Paul,

On Fri, 2018-09-21 at 09:03 +0100, Paul Sherwood wrote:
...
> 
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "deterministic" in this context.
> I'm just meaning:
> 
> A) we write some code and expect it to do (only) what we think it
> does
> B) we apply some rules (preferably plus tooling) to help us to
> improve 
> our confidence that our expectation A) is satisfied
> 
> As I understand it some languages are expressly designed towards
> this 
> goal (e.g. Rust, Haskell), but obviously some of the established 
> languages were not. (The first and key target/candidate for me being 
> 'C', because it's still used in various crucial and popular
> components).
> 
...
> 
> Overall I'm aiming to generate evidence to support a "here's why we 
> think it's ok to trust foo" argument. If we can come up with ways to 
> increase our confidence in important/pervasive C foo, that will be a 
> worthwhile achievement imo.
> 
...

I usually attribute to the word "deterministic" a meaning closer to
"repeatable", for instance: re-running the same program on the same
input always produces the same output.

Would the meaning of A) be that the functionality provided by the
software meets the specifications (requirements) under which the
software has been developed?

Fulvio