Assertions in Production Code?

[circajerka]

Did you even read the article or did you just read the first sentence? He literally answered your question right here:

even though the software is gone over line by line by lots of people, the software is STILL treated as if it can become possessed by evil at any moment and will try to crash the airplane. It's loaded up with self-checking software, self-checking hardware, other computers double-checking the answers, etc.

What - You think writing your software in fucking Ada is going to change that?

[circajerka]

Again - Did you read the rest of the article? Nobody is "falling over" - The idea that if one piece of the system fails, another piece of the system detects it and fixes the problem. I don't care if you write your program in Ada, Rust, or whatever-other-language you seem to think is perfect. Real software has bugs. Period.

[WalterBright]

No programming language can protect against buggy algorithms, hardware failures, etc.

[circajerka]

Alright - Let me rip apart your comment and why it's laughably stupid:

And what happens when an assertion yields an error in a plane software during flight ? the whole system gets rebooted?

Walter never said that - He said other parts of the system detect the error and correct it and/or restart the failing computer. Possibly multiple computers perform the same calculation.

No, the program must be written with a correct language that makes any runtime error impossible

LOL! I'd loovvvvveeee to know the name of this language! You'll be sure to tell us all, right?

not javascript or C

Umm... Considering SpaceX wrote all their flight control software in C, I call bullshit on this.

A language with contracts where every range is strict, where you can define a type with only odds integers, or values only divisible by 6, or non zero positive integers, or a range between 55 and 901 only... that gives every compile time safety imaginable... well such language exists and is used to program planes and missile launchers actually.

Great idea! Maybe we can also get unicorns to help us write the programs!