Re: stupid question

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

I hope you're not trolling to see if you can start a language war. ;-)

Some have mentioned Spark - a subset of Ada. That has merit. I regularly 
build engine controls for jet and rocket engines using Ada - not the 
Spark subset. We don't use *all* features of Ada - usually for timing or 
sizing concerns or its just not in the nature of what we do. (Strings, 
for example, just aren't a big concern for an engine control.) We 
understand what things in the language may have some uncertainty or risk 
involved and make choices about what we use on a case-by-case basis.

In general we like Ada because of all the checking it does. (and other 
reasons, but for safety purposes, its the checking.) When we started 
using Ada we kept stats on defects found in the software and discovered 
that we had reduced error rates by a factor of four. We were building 
"safe" software before, but doing so with a much higher cost in testing 
and rework. Now, because we don't inject so many errors, its less 
expensive to make the software safe.

MDC



Shanon Fernald wrote:
> What programming language do you think would be best to use if you
> were building the software to manage a nuclear power plant and why?
> Which would let you sleep best at night knowing you lived next door to
> the plant?


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Marin David Condic
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