On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 11:12 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan@gmail.com> wrote:


It depends on what you mean by "hung". If we're talking about "in an
unforeseen state caused by a bug" then of course the HT prevents
detecting this reliably. However in this case I think the OP means
something more ordinary, "not finished yet because there's a lot to do".
This doesn't prevent giving a meaningful progress report.

If you think you know what you are talking about, perhaps you would consider a fixed-fee contract on a perpetual motion machine.

From a practical point of view, all possible states of a program cannot be examined and tested.  If you want to think of some extreme state (the assumed hardware gives misleading answers, for example) as a "bug," so be it, but I wouldn't be hiring you to manage anything.

Robert.