[Haskell-cafe] Knight Capital debacle and software correctness

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Sat, 4 Aug 2012, Vasili I. Galchin <vigalchin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Haskell Group,
>
>    I work in mainstream software industry.
>
>    I am going to make an assumption .... except for Jane Street
> Capital all/most "Wall Street" software is written in an imperative
> language.
>
>    Assuming this why is Wall Street not awaken to the dangers. As I
> write, Knight Capital may not survive the weekend.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Vasili

I believe this particular mild error was in part due to a failure
to grasp and apply category theory.  There are several systems here:

1. The design of the code.

2. The coding of the code.

3. The testing of the code.

4. The live running of the code.

5. The watcher systems which watch the live running.

If the newspaper reports are to be believed, the watcher systems,
all of them, failed.  Or there was not even one watcher system
observing/correcting/halting at the time of running.

Category theory suggests that all of these systems are worthy of
study, and that these systems have inter-relations, which are
just as worthy of study.

oo--JS.