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It's long been done fairly successfully in business domains like aerospace and firmware development. Where I'm less convinced that it's an option with a high l

It's long been done fairly successfully in business domains like aerospace and firmware development. Where I'm less convinced that it's an option with a high likelihood of success is in open source. It's one thing when you've got a $250,000 salary riding on you ability to scrupulously follow best practices. But results may vary when the work is being done on an amateur basis.

varjag 5y ago
I'm doing embedded development day and night, so am aware how prolific C is. That however does not make it memory safe. 'Best practices' really means using humans as compiler preprocessors and hedges on humans being infallible.
xxpor 5y ago
>you've got a $250,000 salary riding on you ability to scrupulously follow best practices Sounds like a great way to have a toxic workplace that either yells at people for bugs, or never gets anything done because people are paranoid about committing bugs (or both!). Meanwhile, with a different language you get the compiler yelling at you instead. Automated enforcement uber alles. I don't think open source vs commercial dev really matters that much.
adwn 5y ago
> But results may vary when the work is being done on an amateur basis. Much, if not most, of Linux kernel development is done by employees of various companies, who are being paid for their work. Typically, that's in the form of device drivers, which also happens to be where I've seen the shoddiest, buggiest code in the kernel [1]. [1] Think "driver A abusing the 'private' pointer of driver B for its own purposes" kind of buggy.
Too 5y ago
If by successful you mean where changing one line of code takes 2 weeks of change request, 2 weeks of requirement analysis, 2 weeks of system specification translation, 2 weeks of test specification, 2 weeks of test case implementation, 1 day of implementation and finally 2 weeks of code review, and so on. Then yes, you are completely right. In aerospace you probably want all this anyway, but for others, where 99.99% is enough, there needs to be a cheaper and more efficient way.

varjag 5y ago

I'm doing embedded development day and night, so am aware how prolific C is. That however does not make it memory safe. 'Best practices' really means using humans as compiler preprocessors and hedges on humans being infallible.

xxpor 5y ago

>you've got a $250,000 salary riding on you ability to scrupulously follow best practices Sounds like a great way to have a toxic workplace that either yells at people for bugs, or never gets anything done because people are paranoid about committing bugs (or both!). Meanwhile, with a different language you get the compiler yelling at you instead. Automated enforcement uber alles. I don't think open source vs commercial dev really matters that much.

adwn 5y ago

> But results may vary when the work is being done on an amateur basis. Much, if not most, of Linux kernel development is done by employees of various companies, who are being paid for their work. Typically, that's in the form of device drivers, which also happens to be where I've seen the shoddiest, buggiest code in the kernel [1]. [1] Think "driver A abusing the 'private' pointer of driver B for its own purposes" kind of buggy.

Too 5y ago

If by successful you mean where changing one line of code takes 2 weeks of change request, 2 weeks of requirement analysis, 2 weeks of system specification translation, 2 weeks of test specification, 2 weeks of test case implementation, 1 day of implementation and finally 2 weeks of code review, and so on. Then yes, you are completely right. In aerospace you probably want all this anyway, but for others, where 99.99% is enough, there needs to be a cheaper and more efficient way.