[tpm] Complexity and language

[arocker at Vex.Net]

I'll deal with the other points later, but I want to address this one now.
>
> Another issue is 'handling errors'.
>
> I'm not talking about 'catching exceptions' or listening to return values
> or errno; but what stupid things can your user's do (in either input or
> 'sequencing') that can cause your app to miss states, or wander
> through informational states that you never thought of in advance
> (ie. _ALL_ of the boundary conditions).  You know...
> "I've fixed all the 'known' bugs"... but what about the 'unknown' bugs'?

> Fulko
>

TPM are probably bored with me talking about destructive testing, but at
the risk of repeating myself; the company that taught me to program had a
design standard that started every system with a data validation program,
to check every field in the input for reasonable values.

Before these programs were put into production,there was a final ordeal
they had to survive; reading their own object code, input backwards. To
pass, they had to output a reasonable set of error messages, and terminate
normally, even though what they'd just swallowed was about as unreasonable
as it was possible to get.