4 ms·
"What's the best language" is a sure fire way to not get any useful answers(because you'll get all possible answers) from a crowd of programmers, IMO. What's "
by josefonseca 14y ago
"What's the best language" is a sure fire way to not get any useful answers(because you'll get all possible answers) from a crowd of programmers, IMO.
What's "best" for what? Does the safety critical system need to be fast and respond to real time events in real time? Or is it safety critical but is allowed to be slow? What kind of hardware is it running on?
Depending on your hardware, the only safety critical language may be assembler, so you can check every single instruction and make sure it's precise.
Having said all that, Apollo 11's code was written in a meta-language, then compiled to assembly instructions, then hand-compiled into computer code. You don't get any more safety critical than taking the first men to the moon.
http://googlecode.blogspot.com.br/2009/07/apollo-11-missions-40th-anniversary-one.html http://googlecode.blogspot.com.br/2009/07/apollo-11-missions...
- vbtemp 14y agoI'm not an expert on Apollo flight software, but comparing the role of flight software in the avionics of 60s era spacecraft isn't really a fair comparison. From what I recall there were a number of FSW faults and overloads just prior to the lunar landing, which had to be manually (literally flipping a switch) reset and overridden. Today software is the "complexity sponge" of most aerospace systems - I recall some figure that in the F-4 (a 60's era figher), about 4% of moving surfaces were under software control. These days on contemporary fighter jets and spacecraft that figure is in the 90% range.
- Czarnian 14y agoSafety-critical software is any software where failure can result in death/severe injury to a person or loss/severe damage to equipment/property. There are concrete answers to the question. Many languages are just flat not capable of being safety-critical.