4 ms·

I think not a single actual application is completely well formed. They all work on luck. Especially in the embedded world. Btw, my android just rebooted.

smilekzs 10y ago
"In the embedded world" covers a huge area, including mission-critical avionics code, which likely has much higher safety standard than, say, Android.
- hexane360 10y ago
  Although from hearing about the Apollo Guidance Computer, it's just as much of a miracle they were able to get it to work without any debugging or compilers, with basically one shot to write the program to ROM.
  - roberthensing 10y ago
    Well they put in an effort of 1400 man years for just the software. They even built an interpreter, because (flight/trajectory) requirements were changing all the time. Also: "The highest level of testing was performed with a high fidelity digital simulation of the computer, spacecraft hardware, and mission environment." http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf
- swah 10y ago
  And the architecture of the whole system is commonly an infinite while loop.
  - smilekzs 10y ago
    Not necesarily. RTOS is gaining market.
r00fus 10y ago
Wow. How do you put up with that kind of behavior from such a mission critical device like a phone?
- tener 10y ago
  You don't die when your phone reboots.
  - pestaa 10y ago
    Parent was sarcastic.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      Actually I wasn't. If my phone had the habit of rebooting while I was on a conference call/webex, I might endanger a contract or lose a customer. For me, my phone is mission critical.
voltagex_ 10y ago
If you're interested, the next time your phone crashes like that, /proc/last_kmesg (or similar) may tell you the reason. Whether or not this is acceptable for software and hardware to have gotten this unreliable is another question entirely.
tsukikage 10y ago
"Complex systems usually operate in failure mode", (c) John Gall

smilekzs 10y ago

"In the embedded world" covers a huge area, including mission-critical avionics code, which likely has much higher safety standard than, say, Android.

hexane360 10y ago
Although from hearing about the Apollo Guidance Computer, it's just as much of a miracle they were able to get it to work without any debugging or compilers, with basically one shot to write the program to ROM.
- roberthensing 10y ago
  Well they put in an effort of 1400 man years for just the software. They even built an interpreter, because (flight/trajectory) requirements were changing all the time. Also: "The highest level of testing was performed with a high fidelity digital simulation of the computer, spacecraft hardware, and mission environment." http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf http://klabs.org/history/history_docs/mit_docs/1711.pdf
swah 10y ago
And the architecture of the whole system is commonly an infinite while loop.
- smilekzs 10y ago
  Not necesarily. RTOS is gaining market.

r00fus 10y ago

Wow. How do you put up with that kind of behavior from such a mission critical device like a phone?

tener 10y ago
You don't die when your phone reboots.
- pestaa 10y ago
  Parent was sarcastic.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    Actually I wasn't. If my phone had the habit of rebooting while I was on a conference call/webex, I might endanger a contract or lose a customer. For me, my phone is mission critical.

voltagex_ 10y ago

If you're interested, the next time your phone crashes like that, /proc/last_kmesg (or similar) may tell you the reason. Whether or not this is acceptable for software and hardware to have gotten this unreliable is another question entirely.

tsukikage 10y ago

"Complex systems usually operate in failure mode", (c) John Gall