cool article, interesting quote

But craftsmen don't use C either. ;-)

(take off from an old Consumer Reports article I read on hammers - "While it's true that craftsmen don't blame their tools, they don' tbuy $5 hammers either.")

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  Keith
Reply to
Keith
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The Space Shuttle On Board Software is a notable exception. No C their either. ;-)

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  Keith
Reply to
Keith

How about PL/M?

Id' love to see Ada on an 8051. ;-)

I used assembler then and do (when I have the opportunity) now.

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  Keith
Reply to
Keith

"Lanarcam" writes: [snip]

Safety-critical applications are one thing -- the rest of the world is something else. Sometimes one wonders about the care that was taken with hardware design when dealing with some products. The History Channel has a whole series of programs about engineering failures (and none of them involve computers).

"Proof of correctness" is a wonderful concept and would be a boon to the computing world, but to my knowledge, a lot of research has been done on the concept but little has come of it that's of use in the real world.

Reply to
Everett M. Greene

Objection!

I consider myself a craftsman - I take a lot of pride in what I do. I use C in preference to any other language. I even use C as a design language when coding in assembler (compiling manually, if you like). I prefer C as it's fairly feature-neutral - i.e. I can do what I do without the language getting in the way.

So: nerrrr! ;)

Re the OP: I'm surprised at Jack Ganssle; I have a lot of time for his point of view usually. This doesn't sound like him - he usually talks sense. Wouldn't be surprised if he was misquoted, or quoted out of context.

Steve

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Reply to
Steve at fivetrees

We hear a lot of things on a lot of things from people who don't know what they're talking about. Why not try ?

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Reply to
Bjarne Bäckström

Ada has it's own gotcha's, not least of which is a culture of assumed perfection around the language.

The one value-added contribution I ever made to an Ada project was to debug some code. The context was that the product that I worked on, which was programmed in C, was in the process of getting connected to a user input panel which used Ada. There was a really stupid bit-reversal bug in the code. We absolutely couldn't get the panel manufacturer to believe that the problem could be in their code.

It finally came down to them flying out to a meeting where I noticed a discrepancy in the way a structure was defined for the one message that had a problem. When I pointed it out, they _still_ wouldn't admit that a bug in a system that used a mix of C and Ada could possibly be in the Ada code. I finally had to say "gee, I'm just a stupid C programmer from Oregon. Could you explain what A[31..0] means in relation to B[0..31]"? Once they actually _looked_ at their code instead of assuming that anything in C was bug-ridden they saw it -- but only after god knows how many $$ were spent in a transcontinental flight and a

6-developer meeting.

My point? You can screw up in _any_ language, simply by misusing its features or failing to think things through. Granted, C may give you more opportunities for this, but if you do things _really well_ it won't matter if its C, Ada, assembly or COBOL -- it'll be right, and it'll take a bunch of work. And if you _are_ signing up for something that _must_ be done _really well_, then you're signing up for a whole bunch of extra work, no matter what language you choose.

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Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
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Tim Wescott
[snip]

What brand?

Yellow light sequences for red-light-cameras are chosen to maximize income ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson
[snip]
[snip]

Don't you just hate it when you have to keep saying, "Look! Look here! Look here, gawd-dammit!", before they finally see THEIR error... then they waffle... never admit a mistake ;-)

I had a situation awhile back where another "design" team was using an OpAmp open-loop as a gain element... the simulator said it worked ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

cup,

an

Melita.

The first time San Diego tried the red-light cameras, all the tickets were thrown out after it was discovered that the company who ran them was paid by the ticket, and that they were gaming the light timing. Except for those that were already paid, like my wife's.

Now the contractors get a fixed fee no matter what the revenue is.

Reply to
Richard Henry

I searched the site for "proven" and "certified" and nothing came up. So did you have a specific part of the site in mind? It is obviously a site dedicated to promoting ada.

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is a site dedicated to promoting intercal.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

In article , John Larkin wrote: [....]

IIRC, the RCA 1802 was after 1970. It makes the 8051 look advanced.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

If not C the what? :D

-Le Chaud Lapin-

Reply to
Le Chaud Lapin

Here in Toronto (Canada), we only have them on major intersections. We never had a scandal dealing with the timing of the lights. But I remember such a loud public outcry because Toronto is always complaining about fiscal imbalances and was looking for another way to bilk us out of money (heh, don't those guys collect enough in taxes geeze...).

I also remember Toronto was considering using an unmarked van on major freeways that would try and capture the license plates of anyone going over the speed limit. Again, VERY LOUD public outcry cause EVERYONE goes over the speed limit :-). The limit on freeways here is 100km/h (I think about 60 miles/h for those who use the Imperial system). I wonder what driving on the autobahn would be like?

I've always wondered what kind of controller do traffic lights use? I've read that they used 8052 based chips with high power relays and on the other hand I have read that they make use of PLC's. Anyone know?

Reply to
Isaac Bosompem

Good point.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

I just did a quick google search for "certified ada compiler". The results are somewhat interesting.

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refers to extentions they've added.

I was also unaware that ADA had "pragma" statements.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

Another search turned up a note that the adahome site is in fact years out of date but has some sort of robot that does a day update on the page to keep showing up in searched with date restrictions.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

Sorry, the adahome page has apparently not been updated much since last time I visited it several years ago. Some introductory material and the Ada Reference Manual (ARM) is there, though, so you can judge yourself how "complex and feature ridden" the language is.

An Ada Wiki is here:

and you can read about certification at the homepage of Ada Information Clearinghouse:

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Reply to
Bjarne Bäckström

In article , Everett M. Greene wrote: [...]

Near enough, you can say correctness proofs are imposible for nontrivial programs. The effort in the proof grows much faster than the complexity of the program. Also, there is a problem with proving a program "incorrect". Some programs can't be proven correct or incorrect.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge
Reply to
Ken Smith

In the beginning of the eighties I wrote a concurrent Pascal compiler for the 1802 chip -- and I'm on the border to agree with you. :-)

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Reply to
Bjarne Bäckström

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