4 ms·
Well, sometimes perfect safety is the only option. Would you fly on a plane that is piloted by a workable system delivered in a timely manner ?
by sacado2 11y ago
Well, sometimes perfect safety is the only option. Would you fly on a plane that is piloted by a workable system delivered in a timely manner ?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- bunderbunder 11y agoConsidering the languages that are normally used to write aircraft control software, this is perhaps a questionable choice of example. And there are probably very good reasons why a language like Haskell is not likely to be chosen for this kind of application. Consider predictability: Haskell may make it easy to prove algorithmic correctness, but its laziness makes runtime characteristics more difficult to reason about because they're hidden behind so much abstraction. This could make it very difficult to deal with stuff like subtle bugs related to timing issues that might crop up in an electromechanical system.
- sacado2 11y agoYes, I totally agree, I was just questioning the above assertion : "perfect safety is only good for ivory tower guys".
- coldtea 11y agoPerfectly safe systems like planes, missiles, space missions etc. are 99% done in imperative languages such as C and Ada. Not Haskell and not even Lisp. The last thing you want from a perfectly safe system is some lazyness smartness in the compiler hitting at the wrong time and affecting execution time, memory use etc, or things like GC pauses.
- sacado2 11y agoYes. My comment was not clear, I don't associate "perfect safety" with functional purity. Quite the opposite actually, for the reasons you gave.
- dagw 11y agoWould you fly on a plane that is piloted by a workable system delivered in a timely manner ? I do every time I get in a plane.