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> you don't want dynamically-generated code controlling your x-ray machine... I don't see how it follows that you can't have a functional language controlling

> you don't want dynamically-generated code controlling your x-ray machine... I don't see how it follows that you can't have a functional language controlling an x-ray machine. You can make an appeal to complexity, I suppose, but this can be managed. If Erlang is used to create a 99.999999999% reliable cellphone infrastructure (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-9999999-nine-nines-reliability http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-999999...), I believe it can handle medical device functions :P I mean seriously, at that level of reliability, even if you have a health-critical device with literally just 10 assembly instructions, a cosmic ray could still flip a bit (http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html) and cause a catastrophe! And as far as Java (which I'm not necessarily a fan of, I'm just making a counterargument) and medical devices, look here: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java-for-healthcare-433550.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java...

humanrebar 11y ago
> You can make an appeal to complexity, I suppose, but this can be managed. If Erlang is used to create a 99.999999999% reliable cellphone infrastructure (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-999999... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-999999...), I believe it can handle medical device functions :P Imagine you gave someone cancer every time a call was dropped. Even 0.00001% is a big risk, depending on what you're doing. You also want something that reliable out of the gate, not after years of beta testing. > even if you have a health-critical device with literally just 10 assembly instructions, a cosmic ray could still flip a bit (http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html) and cause a catastrophe! Sure. That's why there are dead-man switches, watchdogs, heartbeats, acks, checksums, etc. in the majority of ('all' is a strong word) safety critical software. If random corrupt data gets written to the wrong location, the consuming subsystem (hardware or software) should do the safest thing possible.
TickleSteve 11y ago
true, I should explain better.... I was sort of referring to the fact that most functional languages are also dynamic/meta-programming type of environments, not compiled to straight non-modifiable all-ROMable code that absoutely will not change at run-time. Those are the features that are frowned upon, not the functional programming features. So for examnple, a LISP or Haskell that compiles down to a straight binary that is all static is absolutely possible, but you do lose out on the nice features. There has been research into a SIL4 jvm, but I cant find any product that came out of it. Bare in mind that you need 100% traceability, 100% code coverage, etc all the way from your byte-code down to bare-metal, thru the JVM/runtime/etc. >http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java.. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java.... Thats just plain old embedded Java... nothing to see here, we're talking SIL rated java... its a different animal

humanrebar 11y ago

> You can make an appeal to complexity, I suppose, but this can be managed. If Erlang is used to create a 99.999999999% reliable cellphone infrastructure (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-999999... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8426897/erlangs-99-999999...), I believe it can handle medical device functions :P Imagine you gave someone cancer every time a call was dropped. Even 0.00001% is a big risk, depending on what you're doing. You also want something that reliable out of the gate, not after years of beta testing. > even if you have a health-critical device with literally just 10 assembly instructions, a cosmic ray could still flip a bit (http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html http://status.aws.amazon.com/s3-20080720.html) and cause a catastrophe! Sure. That's why there are dead-man switches, watchdogs, heartbeats, acks, checksums, etc. in the majority of ('all' is a strong word) safety critical software. If random corrupt data gets written to the wrong location, the consuming subsystem (hardware or software) should do the safest thing possible.

TickleSteve 11y ago

true, I should explain better.... I was sort of referring to the fact that most functional languages are also dynamic/meta-programming type of environments, not compiled to straight non-modifiable all-ROMable code that absoutely will not change at run-time. Those are the features that are frowned upon, not the functional programming features. So for examnple, a LISP or Haskell that compiles down to a straight binary that is all static is absolutely possible, but you do lose out on the nice features. There has been research into a SIL4 jvm, but I cant find any product that came out of it. Bare in mind that you need 100% traceability, 100% code coverage, etc all the way from your byte-code down to bare-metal, thru the JVM/runtime/etc. >http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java.. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java.... Thats just plain old embedded Java... nothing to see here, we're talking SIL rated java... its a different animal