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: 103376,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,df854b5838c3e14 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public From: egf@Rt66.com (Ed Franks) Subject: Re: C/C++ knocks the crap out of Ada Date: 1996/02/20 Message-ID: <4gd94r$isu@mack.rt66.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 140326123 references: <4etcmm$lpd@nova.dimensional.com> <4f4ptt$a1c@newsbf02.news.aol.com> <4g1b7n$l5@mailhub.scitec.com.au> <4gaa6l$8mk@post.gsfc.nasa.gov> organization: Engineering International, Inc. newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++ Date: 1996-02-20T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: In article <4gaa6l$8mk@post.gsfc.nasa.gov>, Mike Stark wrote: >jsa@organon.com (Jon S Anthony) wrote: >>In article <4g1b7n$l5@mailhub.scitec.com.au> ramsesy@rd.scitec.com.au (Ramses Youhana) writes: >> >>> You'll be surprised how easily both junior (and senior) engineers can turn >>> both C/C++ and Ada programs into spaghetti code. The language itself >>> doesn't make for a quality system. >> >>Yes, but there are degrees of ease with which this can be done. I think >>that was more to the point. >> >> >>> Didn't NASA loose a satelite due to a bug in a piece of Ada code? >> >>I don't think so. I believe that the only confirmed case of a probe >>loss due to software was a Venus probe which had Fortran code (the >>problem was a "lexical" error concerning spaces not acting as lexical >>separators). The recent Mars probe that "vanished" was (last I saw) >>thought to have been lost due to a small rupture in one of the on board >>tanks. This caused the ship to go into uncontrolled tumbling. I don't >>know what it was programmed with. >> >>/Jon >>-- >>Jon Anthony >>Organon Motives, Inc. >>1 Williston Road, Suite 4 >>Belmont, MA 02178 >> >>617.484.3383 >>jsa@organon.com >> > >Folks -- > >The mere fact that Ada (or any other language) is used for a satellite does not >guarantee that the software is reliable enough -- there is far more to engineering >flight qualified software. That being said, I would prefer a language that can >use exception handling to recover from anomalies such as bit flips caused by >cosmic rays, and that doesn't allow unrestricted address arithmetic to >(potentially) store data into the code currently in memory. Ada isn't the only >language designed for high reliability (Java and Eiffel leap to mind), but if I >were a satellite project manager I would certainly prefer it to C or C++. Yes, but you are not. Meanwhile, the software for the Mission Control Center (MOC) at NASA Johnson Space Center is being rewritten in C++, not ADA. > >Mike > >----------------------------------------------------------------------- >Michael Stark NASA/GSFC >Phone: (301) 286-5048 Code 552 >Fax: (301) 286-0245 Greenbelt, MD 20771 >e-mail: michael.e.stark@gsfc.nasa.gov Ed Franks