[dragonwriter]

> This kind of program is pretty analogous to basically every program that communicates with the network, user, or some other external system.

Not really; it's quite possible, and often desirable, to do that without potentially infinite loops.

[simcop2387]

So how do you do that for the server side of things? Only accept a certain number of connections before you have to completely shut down and restart the server? How do you do the restart without the infinite loop somewhere?

[swsieber]

Exactly - you want timeouts, exponential backoff, etc. You want to know what happens if a network failure happens - you don't want to retry ad nauseam.

[sillysaurus3]

Some of the most reliable programs are those without exponential backoff and which retry infinitely in network failure situations. `ping` is one example.

[swsieber]

And yet I'd be completely fine with a ping that was capped to running for no more than a week. YMMV though.

And more to the point, you don't want a program that goes on forever in a setup like ethereum. I guess your rebuttal was called for since the initial point was a little hyperbolic.

[sillysaurus3]

How?