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Well, by critical I mean, if it fails, the possibility of at least one human death is very high.
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Mirds wrote: Well, by critical I mean, if it fails, the possibility of at least one human death is very high.
Does the developers life count? 
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Okay, two lives, including one developer 
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I create and maintain hospital software. I guess it could be considered in this category. If our software fails, the nurses could always talk to each other like they did before they used our software.
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I am in the C++ category.
[EDIT]Well its not that critical. If it were I would have to go through FDA approval.[/EDIT]
John
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We deliver dispatching software for emergency numbers (911 etc...)
critical enough? 
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Mirds wrote: Where are all the people that makes critical programs?
you mean like direct missiles and aircraft? err... I don't know.... somewhere I am sure.... 
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Mirds wrote: It appears that almost everyone writes web related programs.
Where are all the people that makes critical programs?
I develop business-logic, not web front-ends. Can't get myself interested in doing that.
-cb
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The demand for Desktop applications is dwindling.
People want to live in the "clouds" now.
Personally, I'd rather keep the desktop apps.
I like to know my software will be there in a year if I still want to use it.
Good thing I'm a programmer, just in case.
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I mean, hard real-time programs.
It is just incredible how almost all news I see is about web development, .NET, etc.
Not a single news about ADA, C or even C++.
New languages just aren't secure or safe enough.
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I write Control/Visualization-Apps for industrial machines (milling, cutting etc.). You can call that hard real-time programms with a lot of security code - and security does not mean "unhackable" code - it means no one should loose body parts when changing a drill-bit...
All done with .NET... (C# in my case) 
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johannesnestler wrote: You can call that hard real-time programms
 Do you know what hard real-time means[^]? You can't make hard real-time programs with .NET, or for that matter even with C/C++ on Windows (except CE). You need a RTOS[^] for that.
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You are right! So I maybe exaggerated the role of .NET on "the hard real-time" side of things. 
What we do is Visualize and Control PLC Programs (real time...). We do that on Windows CE with .NET CF, the PLC is software on the same device (ARM) (the device is our own Industrial-PC).
If performance of embedded device is not enough, we use a RTOS with WindowsXP (CEWin from 3s), on more powerfull Industrial-PC's (x86). The complete automation(from drive to PC) is done with our own system and devices. The GUI and the connection to the Soft-PLC (or other devices) are done through .NET. For performance reasons a lot of "machine-logic" resides on the PC-Side (.NET). E.g. movement of machine parts is possible through special .NET Controls, they do the connection to PLC-variables or device codes. (the driver-side code is C/C++, I'm a C/C++ programmer too)
My statement was meant as a "joke"-answer to Mirds post, because someone is thinking (=We) .NET is secure enough to control machines and industrial installations.
Thank you for you outcry!
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Well now...I think this is really an apples vs oranges comparison. As far as not seeing any news about ADA, C or C++... you could just as easily complain about not seeing any news about COBOL, RPGIII or the latest breakthrough of BASIC. It is an old language that very few people, even if they know what they are, have had to use outside of a "Programming History - 101" class. Adahome dot com hasn't seen any action in several years. Short of a major upgrade for hardware optimization, I doubt you'll hear much of anything.
One might also take offense to you lumping C and C++ in with ADA. I would estimate with the same power as one would expect from a Porsche engineer being lumped in with a Chevy and Ford.
For a great many instances, it is not the language, but rather the programmer that makes a program not 'safe' or 'secure' enough. Just about anyone can cram for and pass a certification test to call themselves an 'expert'.
No single raindrop believes it is to blame for the flood.
-irresponsibility@Despair.com
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quinton1969 wrote: Well now...I think this is really an apples vs oranges comparison. As far as not seeing any news about ADA, C or C++... you could just as easily complain about not seeing any news about COBOL, RPGIII or the latest breakthrough of BASIC. It is an old language that very few people, even if they know what they are, have had to use outside of a "Programming History - 101" class. Adahome dot com hasn't seen any action in several years. Short of a major upgrade for hardware optimization, I doubt you'll hear much of anything.
One might also take offense to you lumping C and C++ in with ADA. I would estimate with the same power as one would expect from a Porsche engineer being lumped in with a Chevy and Ford.
For a great many instances, it is not the language, but rather the programmer that makes a program not 'safe' or 'secure' enough. Just about anyone can cram for and pass a certification test to call themselves an 'expert'.
What I meant is, it is easier to build a secure program with ADA and more safe with Spark or Eiffel. Personally, I would never fly in a plane which has its fly-by-wire system written in C++. But I work in a OFP (Operational flight Program) with part of its code written in C, the rest in ADA95.
Recently ADA2005 has been released, but I haven't work with this yet.
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Mirds wrote: Where are all the people that makes critical programs?
And since when is a website not a "critical" program? Where are all the programmers that still understand a website isn't just HTML? HTTP and HTML is just presentation, the real logical development is no different offline or online - barring language differences.
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Have you ever seen how a DO 178-B Level A is done?
When a website can pass this kind of certification, or at least Level C, I will consider this a critical software.
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Mirds wrote: Have you ever seen how a DO 178-B Level A is done?
Don't first use a general term and then argue with a specific that doesn't address my point. I know about RT, and responsiveness. But nevertheless, you can develop a critical app on the web, in the sense of responsiveness, it's just the presentation of it over HTTP and the network can't be in RT. Now, that may be a stall for some, but it's not for others. Which is my point, a web page can be used to deliver that, but it won't work for every instance.
Now, you will probably come back and say, "well gee that's not RT" or whatever. And to that I say read up about how presentation isn't included in that...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing[^]
Also, your jump into the "critical" argument from the OP is sorta bogus too, but I'll leave that one out there for fun.
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: Mirds wrote:
Have you ever seen how a DO 178-B Level A is done?
Don't first use a general term and then argue with a specific that doesn't address my point. I know about RT, and responsiveness. But nevertheless, you can develop a critical app on the web, in the sense of responsiveness, it's just the presentation of it over HTTP and the network can't be in RT. Now, that may be a stall for some, but it's not for others. Which is my point, a web page can be used to deliver that, but it won't work for every instance.
Now, you will probably come back and say, "well gee that's not RT" or whatever. And to that I say read up about how presentation isn't included in that...
Sorry if I used a term that is not very common to everyone, but in my field it really is.
When I started this topic what I intended was to gather some people that do the same thing as I do, not to say that doing this is better than doing web apps, that I really can't do.
The strange thing that I see is that it looks like there's only web ans MS development. And I see some people diminishing dev of critical apps.
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Mirds wrote: Sorry if I used a term that is not very common to everyone, but in my field it really is.
It's a common term, but your post seemed to make it sound like one of two things... web apps were incapable of responsiveness and somehow all desktop apps are critical. Whether or not that was the case, who knows. It's just how I saw it.
Mirds wrote: When I started this topic what I intended was to gather some people that do the same thing as I do, not to say that doing this is better than doing web apps, that I really can't do.
Personally, I think a lot of people do what you do. They just don't visit CP all too much. Keep in mind the demographic of the people taking the poll. And goodness knows your work is important and plenty if you consider stuff like the medical industry, etc.
Just to add my two cents... I think for now, offline (desktop, RT, embedded, etc) and online (so to speak) are both needed. Network latency (and as I'm sure you know, OS latency too) can present a huge problem for certain apps for instance. But, as the net grows and matures I see this boundary getting smaller and smaller. The future is about being "connected" and I don't think there's any way we're going to avoid that. I mean they have refrigerators that can surf the web now. A fridge!
Mirds wrote: The strange thing that I see is that it looks like there's only web ans MS development. And I see some people diminishing dev of critical apps.
Well, that does compose the majority of it (Windows is just so darn popular, but Macs claim about 10% market share now so that's another consideration) this is a MS-centric site. So, MS guys will be on it the most. As for me, I don't use .NET for desktop stuff and for web I don't use any MS technologies most of the time. I'm just the oddball on CP though. 
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Describe Critical.
If you mean applications that control machinery and controllers for vehicles, traffic light systems, road sign displays for traffic warnings and control, medical equipment applications and life support... there doesn't seem to be people beating down the doors for that kind of work.
If you mean building systems such as warehouse inventory management, accounting systems, etc. There are plenty of developers doing this.
If you mean operating system developers - perhaps real time systems without latency - for apps like mentioned above - a peruse around source forge and various linux sites will guide you to many.
I'm not being sarcastic, quite the contraire. Your comment is sorta vague.
If you are looking for programmers that can do more than whip up a c# web service that says hello and/or a php web page counter with today's date - than you are already among many here on this site.
--Jason P Sage
http://www.jegas.com
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Actually I mean the first one. And in this crisis time, I see a lot of offers for this kind of job, specially military ones.
The OS we use is not Linux, never worked with this before, but VxWorks, which, in my opinion, is one of the best for embedded applications.
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Interesting. I personally don't get asked for much embedded work - but I'm not at all surprised at what you say.
One thing I do like about embedded systems from a pure enthusiast point of view is they remind me of the kind of programming I used to for Timex Sinclair, c64 and this microcontroller I bought from RadioShacks years back when they sold cool stuff and not just over priced electronics like tv's and phone gadgets.
I never heard of vxWorks, but I bet its sweet. I don't keep up on embedded stuff so I can't comment to much - however I will say I'm a fan of tight, fast, smart and lean coding - which these days seems to have replaced with text parsing, code generators, and more greater than and less than brackets then I'd ever thought I'd see in a life time.
--Jason P Sage
http://www.jegas.com
Know way to many languages... master of none!
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Wind River VxWorks is for PowerPC and is a RTOS mainly used in large embedded systems, it is almost as predominant in this environment as Windows is on PCs, but it is actually very good.
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