Re: Ada in Boeing 787

[sjw <simon.j.wright@mac.com>]

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" :-)