Archive for March 28, 2011

Monday, March 28, 2011

Finding and Understanding Bugs in C Compilers

Xuejun Yang et. al. (via Lambda):

To improve the quality of C compilers, we created Csmith, a randomized test-case generation tool, and spent three years using it to find compiler bugs.…Every compiler we tested was found to crash and also to silently generate wrong code when presented with valid input. In this paper we present our compiler-testing tool and the results of our bug-hunting study.

App Store Design Awards

MacNN notes that the Apple Design Awards 2011 are only for products in the App Store. I doubt that anyone is surprised, and of course it’s an improvement over last year’s awards, which were only for iOS apps.

The kinds of products that win ADAs have changed. Once upon a time, disk utilities overwhelmed with options and animation eye candy, and DiskWarrior won for being a great product with a simple interface. Today, a product like DiskWarrior would never win and, due to the Mac App Store guidelines, is not even eligible.