Those who don&#x27;t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.<p>My favorite Hoare quote given at his ACM award speech in 1980, referring to his work in Algol during the late 60&#x27;s:<p>&quot;Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interests of efficiency on production runs.
Unanimously, they urged us not to - they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law.&quot;