Re:“Mostly functional” programming does not work (2014)
by sacado2 on Monday June 22, 2015 @01:23PM
(#9759779)
Well, sometimes perfect safety is the only option. Would you fly on a plane that is piloted by a workable system delivered in a timely manner ?
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Re:“Mostly functional” programming does not work (2014)
by bunderbunder on Monday June 22, 2015 @03:19PM
(#9760589)
Considering the languages that are normally used to write aircraft control software, this is perhaps a questionable choice of example.
And there are probably very good reasons why a language like Haskell is not likely to be chosen for this kind of application. Consider predictability: Haskell may make it easy to prove algorithmic correctness, but its laziness makes runtime characteristics more difficult to reason about because they're hidden behind so much abstraction. This could make it very difficult to deal with stuff like subtle bugs related to timing issues that might crop up in an electromechanical system.
Re:“Mostly functional” programming does not work (2014)
by sacado2 on Tuesday June 23, 2015 @10:21AM
(#9764779)
Yes, I totally agree, I was just questioning the above assertion : "perfect safety is only good for ivory tower guys".
Re:“Mostly functional” programming does not work (2014)
by coldtea on Monday June 22, 2015 @06:15PM
(#9761558)
Perfectly safe systems like planes, missiles, space missions etc. are 99% done in imperative languages such as C and Ada.
Not Haskell and not even Lisp.
The last thing you want from a perfectly safe system is some lazyness smartness in the compiler hitting at the wrong time and affecting execution time, memory use etc, or things like GC pauses.