Ada in Boeing 787

Ada in Boeing 787

[Jerry]

I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 4 fév, 05:09, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

“ it's an old language ”

what about C and C++ ?

“ he says uses C and C++ ”

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Jeffrey R. Carter]

Jerry wrote:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

"It's an old language" is an odd reason not to use a language from someone who 
uses C (much older than Ada) and C++ (about the same age as Ada).

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
07

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Rick]

I may be prejudiced but I would have thought that the only safe place
in a plane to use C++ would be the entertainment system.

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Hibou57 (Yannick Duchêne)]

On 4 fév, 09:22, Rick <rickdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I may be prejudiced but I would have thought that the only safe place
> in a plane to use C++ would be the entertainment system.

I would have though entertainment systems were build up using HTML+CSS
+JavaScript.

To have for serious words : I know in france, some military systems
were build using C++ (do not know if it's still the case, and I'm far
from this peoples, so I could not know).

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Georg Bauhaus]

Jerry schrieb:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

Is there any new language that is largely being used for
technical applications?

Ichbiah said, in 1984, that we would be using different
programming 30 years from then. Do we? I mean, do we
actually use them in embedded systems? Does Java count
as new?

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Ludovic Brenta]

On Feb 4, 5:09 am, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

Ada is in the Common Core system:

http://www.adacore.com/2004/04/20/wind-river-teams-with-adacore-on-platform-safety-critical-arinc-653-for-use-in-boeing-7e7-common-core-system/

Ada is in the air conditioning:

http://www.adacore.com/2006/05/01/hamilton-sundstrand-selects-gnat-pro-for-boeing-787-air-conditioning-pack-control-unit/

Friends don't let friends program in C++.

--
Ludovic Brenta.

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Dmitry A. Kazakov]

On Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:19:13 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> Is there any new language that is largely being used for
> technical applications?
> 
> Ichbiah said, in 1984, that we would be using different
> programming 30 years from then. Do we? I mean, do we
> actually use them in embedded systems?

The focus moved from languages to the tools and "technologies." The
languages obviously failed to deliver acclaimed software quality while
reducing software developing costs. I doubt that tools did either, maybe
the opposite, but this is how it works in the area I know.

I think the reason why tools won is that the language design is far more
expensive and the market was ruined if ever existed. Producing a new tool
chain is a much easier task. Once you fooled the customers you are in
business. Before they recognize that the tool is useless, you or other firm
come up with another tool, on the top of the old one...

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Alex R. Mosteo]

Jerry wrote:

> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

Digressing -- but in-flight entertainment systems are one of the buggiest 
pieces of code I have faced. After two flights waiting for the cabin crew to 
reset mine when I tried some obscure choices, I just stick to playing movies 
and hope for the best.

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Florian Weimer]

* Georg Bauhaus:

> Ichbiah said, in 1984, that we would be using different
> programming 30 years from then. Do we?

Yes, there's now Tcl, Perl, Python, PHP, and Ruby, with somewhat
different development processes and quite difference performance
characteristics.

> I mean, do we actually use them in embedded systems?

What about Lua?

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[jonathan]

On Feb 4, 4:09 am, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ ...

I have clear memories of reading about this in the
early years of in-flight entertainment systems.  I
think it was about 1997/8 .. some UK trade journal
had a small article about a (very) major UK aerospace
company that lost significant money that year entirely
on cost overruns of a million line C/C++ in-flight
entertainment system for (I think) the 777. Same article
said that that year it delivered air flight control
system software in Ada on time and under budget. I enjoyed
that .. might have some small details wrong so I won't
name names, but I remember the Ada v. C++ part of it clearly.
I did some Googling myself. The following 1998 article from
the New York Times seems consistent with my memory:

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/19/business/entertainment-in-the-skies-glitches-still-hurting-video-with-wings.html?pagewanted=2

A quote (but, as they say, read the whole thing):

  Indeed, B/E Aerospace spent three years developing a
  top-line system for British Airways worth as much as
  $155 million before the airline finally abandoned the
  effort last fall after numerous delays. Northwest Airlines
  had a similar experience with Hughes-Avicom, a division
  of the giant Hughes Electronics unit of General Motors.
  And in 1996, United Airlines sued GEC-Marconi, a unit
  of the General Electric Company of Britain when it failed
  to deliver on its promises for an entertainment system
  designed for the first Boeing 777. (The two sides settled
  out of court last fall.)

  The biggest problem with those early systems was that
  they worked only 90 percent of the time, which meant
  that even on flights where the systems were offered only
  in first and business class, a half-dozen seats or more
  might have been out of order.

The cynic in me pictures management types saying:
"Oh good, its not flight control software. Its in-flight
entertainment software. It doesn't actually
have to work. We have just the right tools for that!" I
picture off-the-shelf commercial software, an army of entry
level commercial programmers, and pointy-haired bosses who
were convinced that the combination would save time and money.
What could possibly go wrong?! Of course I'm just making this up.
I don't see fodder for language-war in this, but this sort of
of thing does bring out the armchair engineer in me. Could I
have done better? What combination of network, operating system
and applications software would have worked in 1997? 2010?
Sounds hard, in 1997 anyway .. they have my sympathy. I'ld
very much like to know what they're using now. A decade has
passed, lessons learned. We can safely assume that the
problems are solved. In that decade a whole new generation of
commercial aircraft has been designed. I found a few hints at
this site:

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.740973.13

A few snippets:

   Earlier this year I was flying on Air France. They had
   quite a new in flight entertainment system with a much
   improved map. They rebooted the system at some point
   and on loading [it was] showing Windows CE messages ...
   doing some sort of network boot.
   Dan V

   Singapore Airlines was probably also running some variant
   of Windows for their in flight entertainment- they had
   to reboot it twice between Singapore and London. ;0)
   Andy Brice

   Re Windows CE, the other time I have managed to hang
   the Swiss's entertainment system by playing Solitaire,
   they rebooted my virtual machine and the good old X Window
   screen came up...
   Dimity Leskov

They say that if Bill Gates had a nickel for every time windows
crashed, he'ld be a billionaire.

Jonathan

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[MRE]

On 4 Feb., 05:09, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
> I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?

Your friend will probably know about SW on the seven-late-seven as I
do about software on the A380.
Though I'ven been working on the fat baby for almost five years, I can
only tell you which language
was used for the Doors and Slides Management System: C.

Usually you just see the feet of the elephant in such a project.
Interesting though, that the arguments
against Ada are the same ones they were using at my old company: "We
don't use Ada, it's old fashioned. We use
C, which is much more modern!" Sigh!

Does your friend also tell you, that you must not use object-
orientation because "this is not deterministic" ?

Sending regards while shaking my head,

Marc

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[sjw]

On Feb 4, 5:02 pm, jonathan <johns...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> The cynic in me pictures management types saying:
> "Oh good, its not flight control software. Its in-flight
> entertainment software. It doesn't actually
> have to work. We have just the right tools for that!" I
> picture off-the-shelf commercial software, an army of entry
> level commercial programmers, and pointy-haired bosses who
> were convinced that the combination would save time and money.

I know a little about one of these systems. The main problem IIRC was
that the hardware was wildly underpowered and underresourced, with
banked EEPROM, and there was something like a 10% chance that an in-
situ software upgrade would brick the module. It may well have been
written in C; I don't know if there was an RTOS, but if there was it
most certainly wasn't Windows.

The most problematic module was the Video-Audio Control Module, aka
VACM; there was a rueful sign on the wall, "Nature abhors a VACM" :-)

Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[Jerry]

On Feb 4, 3:32 am, Ludovic Brenta <ludo...@ludovic-brenta.org> wrote:
> On Feb 4, 5:09 am, Jerry <lancebo...@qwest.net> wrote:
>
> > I have an engineer friend who is a long-time employee of Honeywell
> > Flight Systems who claims that the Boeing 787 does not use Ada ("It's
> > an old language"). My friend, as i recall, manages a project involving
> > the airplane's entertainment system which he says uses C and C++ and
> > not Ada. I don't doubt that his subsystem uses C but a bit of web
> > research seems to indicate that the flight systems use Ada. Who is
> > right--the web or my friend who works on the airplane?
>
> Ada is in the Common Core system:
>
> http://www.adacore.com/2004/04/20/wind-river-teams-with-adacore-on-pl...
>
> Ada is in the air conditioning:
>
> http://www.adacore.com/2006/05/01/hamilton-sundstrand-selects-gnat-pr...
>
> Friends don't let friends program in C++.
>
> --
> Ludovic Brenta.

Thanks, Ludovic. This was the sort of thing that I was looking for.

I shouldn't have mentioned the "It's an old language" thing since that
is a distraction from what I was wanting to know.

Jerry