Nancy,

>Jim-
>
>
>>You see, even though many cars are produced with defects, it is a fact that many more cars are produced that function perfectly properly for their users throughout their useful life.
>
>You do realize that functioning "perfectly properly for their users throughout their useful life" is _not_ the same thing as being "bug-free?" It only means "bug not found." Or "bug not noticed."
>
Yes, and I can accept that NEVER found/noticed (by anyone, anywhere, at any time) is a defect but in my opinion would be immaterial to the argument because (again, my opinion) it would never participate in any counts of defects anywhere. For instance, Mike S. described some defect he found relating to something like 100 projects being open simultaneously. Allowing that that is NEVER going to happen, no one is ever going to see it, so it is never going to appear in a bug list, so it doesn't matter.

>Even if it is possible that code is bug-free, no code of any useful complexity can be proven to be so. And, of course you increase the cost of development past the point of benefit the closer you try to reach 100%.

While that is undoubtedly true today, it is my firm belief that not only will this change, but it will have to change. I suspect that you are correct in that, initially, the costs for such software will be higher and available only in specialized businesses/applications (where they can be afforded). But technology will meet the challenge and then all software will be defect free as a standard.

A small step in that direction is evident in the "MSDN News" (July/August, 2001) where it says "All versions of Windows 2000 use the same executable code to run Win32-based applications. In fact, the only difference between these binaries from one language to another is in translation of their resources...". The story is talking about international/multilingual support, and it goes on to name the numerous benefits. Obviously the best ones are a single source without (language related) conditional compiles and reduced development time.

I think that MS realizes that it is going to have to produce defect-free code in the near future. I believe that they are working toward that end.

JimN