Hacker News Reader

Comment by agounaris | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that is impressive, is the amount of "real life" applications clojure is apparently capable of, compared to other relatively new programming languages. I always was expecting that avionics software would be created using low level languages or something like ADA for example. Really interesting talk that opens a very wide area for clojure!

View on HN

Bear in mind that avionics software as a whole is a broad category that includes everything from fly-by-wire flight controls to the onboard entertainment system. Each system is classified under an appropriate Software Level as specified in DO-178C:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DO-178C#Software_level

The OMF system described in the video is Level E, meaning it's failure would have no safety impact on the aircraft. This gives us greater latitude in choice of software solutions. The higher levels, however, have strict requirements regarding latency and memory management that would automatically preclude the use of Clojure or any language with garbage collection.

So, as always, it's selecting the right tool for the job.

Cheers, interesting info

From my experience most of the work I have done in the last 5 years is in C for Level A - C (and D but that is changing). Ada is only used on legacy projects that started out that way. We have one level D project that uses embedded Linux and a technicolor assortment of languages. E projects generally are a free for all with what is used.

SCADE is also used in levels A-C:

> At present, more than 98 system types have been certified using SCADE DO-178B/C certified tools, for more than 53 aircraft programs, by multiple certification authorities, worldwide, such as the FAA, EASA, Transport Canada, and ANAC, for Levels C to A.

http://www.esterel-technologies.com/industries/do-178b-and-d...

Yeah Simulink produces C code too. Doesn't SCADE produce c and Ada code to be compiled for the target? I mean most Control laws (application code) is now modeled and produces C code. I would not even call SCADE and Simulink a language. Custom OS's that run that SCADE code is written in C.

Right, SCADE compiles down to C, but the development and verification are done in SCADE.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com