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by pilgrim689 5036 days ago
>I don't think our species has produced even one nontrivial correct program

Off the top of my head: seL4, a correct microkernel...pretty nontrivial!

1 comments

Wow, I'm pleased to see that's no longer totally beyond us, though the price is still very high (LtU says fifty dev-years!)
It was actually about 28 py, but that number would come down to 10 if they were to do it again.

source: http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/numbers.pml

This is nothing compared to the number of py spent writing crapware. Think of how much effort has been spent writing lousy software. It is enormous. (But then most consumers of software don't know any better, so from a sales perspective, maybe writing crapware makes perfect sense.)

IMHO, these guys are heros merely for undertaking the task, let alone completing it.