From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 101deb,87f6968ed41c9df1 X-Google-Attributes: gid101deb,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,5ac12f5a60b1bfe X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Ken Garlington Subject: Re: Multiple reasons for failure of Ariane 5 (was: Re: Ariane 5 - not an exception?) Date: 1996/08/12 Message-ID: <320F06C2.3E84@lmtas.lmco.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 173719555 references: <4ta0iu$kks@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <4u538f$9q6@hacgate2.hac.com> <4u6723$kp2@piglet.cc.uic.edu> <4uibvh$1p76@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Systems mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.software-eng,comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.pl1 x-mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (Macintosh; I; 68K) Date: 1996-08-12T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dwnoon@ibm.net wrote: > > But only people who know all of these languages fluently are qualified > to comment. I've been paid fairly good wages to write programs in all four languages that you mentioned (COBOL, PL/I, Ada, and FORTRAN), so I guess I'm qualified to comment: I think, feature-wise, PL/I has sufficient capability to write embedded flight software (which, if you look at the title of this thread, was the domain of interest), assuming the presence of an adequate support library. What strikes me as odd is the thought that PL/I is _better_ than Ada for this domain. I can't think of anything in PL/I that I would want for this domain, that I don't have in Ada. More importantly, based on the list of targets posted recently for which PL/I is available, it seems to me that there's not been a lot of work done to target PL/I compilers to CPUs used in safety-critical flight applications. Ada compilers , on the other hand, are available for several appropriate CPUs (16-bit and 32-bit). Not having a compiler available would seem to be a serious limitation to its use for a particular CPU/domain :) I am curious: Is there anyone in Team PL/I that has actual experience in building (successfully) operational flight control or inertial reference system software in PL/I? For what airframe? CPU? All my PL/I experience is on IBM mainframes... -- LMTAS - "Our Brand Means Quality"