This is from comma.ai, who famously tested on public roads with a reporter in the car and very little prior testing ("the first time it worked was this morning").[1]

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driv...

Unless you're not planning on ever releasing then a platform like this makes sense for strictly research, but Comma AI did plan on releasing their product until they got shut down.

> Wouldn't you want to use the research phase to help eliminate such bugs?

I wouldn't think so. Spending your time fixing bugs in something you realize could have been done better another way, which ends up getting thrown out, seems like a waste of time. The words research and development are often paired together because it is a two step process, where development comes after you have learned what can be done.

It's far easier to get the code working in something like Python, and then rewrite it in safety-critical C later. And the kinds of people who can write self-driving cars in Python are using very different skills than the kinds who can write safety-critical C, so it might not even be the same person.

Even so, sorry to say, the code is miles away from any decent software standard. It is almost exactly what you might call CRAP (classes really a procedure) and mixes responsibilities all over the shop. Little attempt is made to abstract behaviour, and there are differing units, and random multipliers all over the place. Using c++ and python, both of which are OO many classes of error could be avoided if any actual OO features were used, even if MISRA was not a target, sadly the code doesn't do that.

This has all the hallmarks of software that doesnt know if it's doing m/s or mph.

I think the rub is that this code appears to be intended for "production" (or at least use on public roads), given the fact that it's published by a company that has tested its products on open roads?