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If you need certification, then this is what you need and hopefully you were already aware of Ferrous Systems before. If you don't need certification (which wil

If you need certification, then this is what you need and hopefully you were already aware of Ferrous Systems before. If you don't need certification (which will be most people) then this doesn't really do anything except reassure you that the software feels like it could be safety qualified because essentially identical software is safety qualified. I actually hope there's inspiration for the other side of the fence. ISO 26262 ASIL D ought to be a higher bar than it is, it's not at all clear to me that "Oh yeah, off the shelf general purpose languages can do ASIL D" is the right setting of expectations, but that's where we are today. I'd be more comfortable if for these roles (this is software which if it malfunctions might literally just kill a whole bunch of people) we were demanding a bit more, maybe a lot more, than is currently in that ISO document.

galangalalgol 3y ago
Looking at their fork, I don't think it could do ASIL D until they upstreamed some stuff. And it isn't like rust is a generic language, it was designed to make reasoning about correctness easier, at the cost of anything else but performance, and even that if necessary. Are there specific things you think should be in these standards? For a compiler I mean, there are things you'd require of deployed asil d code you don't really care about for a compiler. Like, if the compuler panics, that is probably fine. If my ABS controller panics, it isn't.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Just FYI three days ago someone from Ferrous said the list of not upstreamed changes is in the tens of lines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37771664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37771664
  - Argorak 3y ago
    Yep, it's only the target files for lynxos178.
- tialaramex 3y ago
  It's a General Purpose language, not a "generic" language that's a particular kind of thing, depending on how much you've been exposed to you may never have seen any programming languages which aren't general purpose because, tragically, we seem as an industry to have decided we all want a single tool - we want to buy a chainsaw and then use that to cut everything, toenails, steak, trees, the tags in new clothes, everything gets the chainsaw treatment because apparently we don't like learning new things. Special Purpose languages are very narrow, they solve one problem and they solve it really well, but if you have a different problem then too bad. I think we should use these much, much more often, and we should have many more of them, but we don't and for the foreseeable future we won't. Because a Special Purpose language only solves a narrow problem it often gets to sidestep lots of horrible Computer Science problems which arise for general purpose languages. To revisit our chainsaw analogy, while using a chainsaw to cut the tags out of your new shirt has lots of opportunities for truly life altering (or ending) accidents, if we use instead a tool that's purpose made the potential accidents are trivial. Oh no, I slipped while using the tag removal tool and... didn't remove the tag. Better try again.

galangalalgol 3y ago

Looking at their fork, I don't think it could do ASIL D until they upstreamed some stuff. And it isn't like rust is a generic language, it was designed to make reasoning about correctness easier, at the cost of anything else but performance, and even that if necessary. Are there specific things you think should be in these standards? For a compiler I mean, there are things you'd require of deployed asil d code you don't really care about for a compiler. Like, if the compuler panics, that is probably fine. If my ABS controller panics, it isn't.

steveklabnik 3y ago
Just FYI three days ago someone from Ferrous said the list of not upstreamed changes is in the tens of lines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37771664 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37771664
- Argorak 3y ago
  Yep, it's only the target files for lynxos178.
tialaramex 3y ago
It's a General Purpose language, not a "generic" language that's a particular kind of thing, depending on how much you've been exposed to you may never have seen any programming languages which aren't general purpose because, tragically, we seem as an industry to have decided we all want a single tool - we want to buy a chainsaw and then use that to cut everything, toenails, steak, trees, the tags in new clothes, everything gets the chainsaw treatment because apparently we don't like learning new things. Special Purpose languages are very narrow, they solve one problem and they solve it really well, but if you have a different problem then too bad. I think we should use these much, much more often, and we should have many more of them, but we don't and for the foreseeable future we won't. Because a Special Purpose language only solves a narrow problem it often gets to sidestep lots of horrible Computer Science problems which arise for general purpose languages. To revisit our chainsaw analogy, while using a chainsaw to cut the tags out of your new shirt has lots of opportunities for truly life altering (or ending) accidents, if we use instead a tool that's purpose made the potential accidents are trivial. Oh no, I slipped while using the tag removal tool and... didn't remove the tag. Better try again.