[E-Lang] E FAQ

[Steven J. Owens]

Marc Stiegler wrote:
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> My studies of the Java Security Manager lead me to believe that E makes it
> enormously easier to do the right thing. Which leads me back to a mantra I
> started repeating 20 years ago, as a youth in the defense industry, when I
> spent half my life fighting for exceptions to the military standards for
> software development:
> 
> If you want people to do something the right way, you must make the right
> way the easy way.

     Hey!  I started saying the same thing, but it was only 15 years ago :-).

> [...] computer scientists succeeded in banishing the GOTO statement
> after decades of holy war, not by banishing the GOTO statement from
> the languages we use, but rather by creating the constructs that
> made it easier to do better things, from if-elseif-else to
> try/catch. GOTO was banished from languages only after the war was
> over and no one cared any more.
> 
> Combining the enormous improvement in security ease in E, with the belief
> that only with easiness comes success, I draw as my own conclusion that
> security will only arise when languages like E have "won".

     This text might be a good thing to include in the FAQ.  In my
example answer re: java, I was struggling to articulate what the first
paragraph above illustrates quite well - that a language that gives
you the concepts to adequately and easily discuss security will
naturally lead to more secure programs.

Steven J. Owens
puff@darksleep.com