Re^2: Projects where people can die

You'll use a language that compiles directly onto the hardware you're running, like C...

You really ought to mark the sardonic parts of your post. I almost fell out of my chair.

Yes, in one sense C compiles down to hardware (or at least the hardware instructions the VM inside the CPU provides), but I'm not sure "safety" is a word that should apply to a language that allows pointer arithmetic.

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Re^3: Projects where people can die by Anonymous Monk on Sep 08, 2006 at 15:36 UTC
Well, control systems have been written in Assembly Language; the development process, correctness by construction, and exhaustive testing are what are expected to produce correct results, not intrinsic features of the language. And if a given language feature, such as pointer arithmetic, is deemed too unsafe (or even just too unpredictable), it is simply not used. That said, you're totally right: Ada is much safer than C for the types of errors you mention, and thus more widely, (but not exclusively) used for such applications.	[reply]

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Re^3: Projects where people can die
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 08, 2006 at 15:36 UTC

That said, you're totally right: Ada is much safer than C for the types of errors you mention, and thus more widely, (but not exclusively) used for such applications.

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