Law and programming treat undefined behavior differently.

nishio - I was thinking about why law and programming have so much in common but seem to be so different, and I realized that there is a difference at the very core.

• In programming, the expression, “Do not do anything undefined” is used to say that “the devil will fly out of your nose if you execute undefined code.
• Laws, on the other hand, are “you may do undefined things” because they are designed to restrict only where there are hindrances, assuming that humans are free to act in principle.Undefined behavior
• The more competent programmers are concerned about “what is Definition.,” but they cannot find it by looking at or searching the articles, and eventually they come to a statement that “there is disagreement among legal scholars,” which makes them wonder what the heck is going on.
  • If a situation arises where that definition is in question, you can go to court.
• yoosee

  • I understand this feeling. On the other hand, in the case of a contract, undefined terms are vulnerable, so it is important to define and destroy them as well as possible.

  • In the case of contracts, “destroying vulnerability = restricting the other party’s freedom.”
  • There is no correct answer as to how much detail to put in the contract depends on how far you want to limit the freedom of the other party.
    • The contract is intended to override the stipulated value as defined in the Civil Code.
    • There is no need to write anything down. When you buy something at a convenience store, you do not sign a sales contract, but a sales contract has occurred.
  • I thought this was the same as “How much test should I write? Write as much as you want to risk.

  • In practice, rather than binding them completely by contract … I think it’s more of an image of closing leaks so that undefined items are not abused, rather than defining everything strictly.

  • It’s like covering only the important parts of the test!

  • I think we may be similar in the way we leave things to operations and run away when we get in trouble…

takao

• Because the API specification contains “rules that can be done,” when you create a program that can do something, you only need to look up the relevant API, but I guess I’m not good at the image of having to know everything to find out if a thing is not caught by the “rules that can’t be done” law. I wondered if it is because I am not very good at it. (I was reading the law, and I thought, “But I can’t do that. (It’s amazing how secure I feel when I’m reading a law and it says what I want to do after the “however.“)

  • The opposite of “what it says you may do” in the program and “what it says you may not do” in the law makes a big difference in the cost of getting to confirm that what you are about to do is OK to do.
    • The cost of knowing that “the law does not prohibit it” is high
    • Is there a better way?

ref. # Commonalities between legal and programming education

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