Complexity Is the Enemy of Dependability - Can Diversity Provide a Defense?

One way forward is through the use of diversity. The best-known applications of diversity in computing date back a couple of decades and involve design diversity, e.g. n-version programming. This kind of diversity, in the pursuit of fault tolerance, has had a checkered history. On the one hand, several famous experiments have shown that the benefits fall far short of what might be expected if the different versions were to fail independently. On the other hand, several serious industrial applications seem to have worked well.