On Thu, 01 May 2008 10:33:23 -0400, Stephen Pelc <stephenXXX@mpeforth.com>
wrote:

I agree.

Paul Keinanen wrote:
Whoa, I remember it as well. I did play with it for some time on my
first 6809 based design (the "grandma"... :-). I had two 8" floppies
which
were moaning often for > 1/2 hour while compiling... Too bad I have
lost the disks with it, I could run it on the DPS emulation
of my th9 system (the "grandpa"... :-).

I cannot take seriously ISR code written in any HLL today either.
I know there is a lot of such a mess being done every day, and it
"works" because the silicon nowadays is >10x (usually well > 100x)
overkill for the current level of software which is produced, but this
does not make it any better.

You will probably remember the BASICM for the 6809, it did have
specifically designed extensions for IRQ, FIRQ etc. handling... I have
played with it as well, even used those while playing, I never put
it into a project though. But it still can run on a th9 emulation I
have in
a DPS window. The guy who wrote it was Herve Tireford, Motorola
had published a lot of his works - I used these extensively as
learning literture and tools.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tg...7600228621276/

Original message: http://groups.google.com/group/comp....d?dmode=source

Mike Silva wrote:
Chris tends to knock down anything except Misra. That is another
accurate Brinch-Hansen quote that I have never seen before.

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linnix wrote:
Yes.

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Andrew Reilly wrote:
In that era my systems were all written in ISO Pascal, with some
extensions. My systems could run interpreted pcode or machine
language, on multiple machines, including the 8080 and the HP3000.
In 1980 I was about to release a complete CP/M system when the PC
hit the world. The system got pulled back, because practical use
on the 8086 required at least 32 bit pointers, and I didn't have
the time (or excuse) to develop that at the time. I lost
everything about 10 years ago in a combination of disk failure and
someone stealing my floppy backups. The remnants are posted in the
download/cpm section on my page.

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Paul Keinanen wrote:
That was a poor quality system. Mine was re-entrant practically
everywhere, and failures were obviously necessary and documented.

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John McCabe wrote:
You probably can. Ada is available as part of the GCC collection,
so now if you can use C or C++ or Fortran or Objective C via gcc,
you can also use Ada.

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(see below) <yaldnif.w@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

I have the same experience. And I still use an in-house developed
Pascal compiler for embedded programming. (It knows Modula-2 as well.)
--

On May 1, 3:10*pm, CBFalconer <cbfalco...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Misra and other such efforts are certainly important and useful, but
they're still akin to trying to make a loaded revolver safe to use as
a hammer. I've spent most of my professional life writing C and I
certainly don't hate it (I like it, for tye typical reasons people
like it), but I cannot fathom why somebody would choose it for safety-
related projects when there was a better choice available (and I don't
mean C++ or Java!). As Brinch-Hansen says, it is not rational. And
when the evidence shows 100 times more residual errors in DO-178B
Level A code written in C than in code written in an Ada-based
language, it is also not responsible.

Mike

In message <481A15B7.6F6D6FA@yahoo.com>, CBFalconer
<cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes
That's not true at all.


--
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Chris H wrote:
Well, that's the impression I get. I may be mistaken.

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On Apr 30, 6:02 pm, Grant Edwards <gra...@visi.com> wrote:
Key words.

The last Pascal program I wrote professionally was in 1984. Not for
an embedded system (we were using a very expensive J73B compiler
targeting the 1750A for that -- but I digress), but rather a tool to
support data analysis on a VAX. I needed a way to mask off fields of
bits within an unsigned integer. No shifts. No AND. Very ugly code.

The bitwise logical operators were _the_ primary reason I switched to
C for most of my coding almost immediately thereafter.

Today, I use C because it is ubiquitous. I don't know of a modern CPU
whose ALU is at least 8 bits wide that isn't supported by a C (or NQC)
compiler. Data analysis tools tend to be written in Python these
days, though...

Regards,

-=Dave

In message <481B7A91.6E25BA24@yahoo.com>, CBFalconer
<cbfalconer@yahoo.com> writes
--
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\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs England /\/\/\/\/
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Chris H wrote:
Well, unlike some around here, I try to avoid snittiness.

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Mike Silva schreef:
The qualities of the programming language itself is only one of the many
criteria when selecting a programming language. The
availability/price/quality of tools and the availability of developers
with sufficient knowledge/experience with that programming language are
often more important considerations.

Mike Silva wrote:
Not rational from a technical sense, yes. However, CEOs and their
upper-level managers have a different thought space: economic. They
see programmer hours and cost per hour as huge expenses and seek ways to
reduce one or the other. A large automotive supplier ( _still_ in
bankruptcy after over two years!) saw India and its' abundant supply of
cheap C programmers as a way to cut costs. So, the decision was made to
drop Modula-GM, with a number of technical advantages over C, and
program in C. To paraphrase Farragut: Damn the technical people! Full
speed ahead!


~Dave T~

On May 3, 12:23*pm, Dombo <do...@disposable.invalid> wrote:
Since we're talking about safety related software in this subthread,
maybe we should add sufficient knowledge/experience with safety
related design and coding as well. And that's where not all
programmers are equal. Sure, you can find gazillions of C and C++
programmers, but how much training will they require before they can
perform adequately in the safety related arena?

It comes down to the oft-asked question, is it better to find
programmers who know the problem space and development methodologies
and get them up to speed on the tools, or programmers who know the
tools and get them up to speed on the problem space and development
methodologies? Assuming, of course, that you aren't able to find both
in the same person. I tend to think that "I don't know language X" is
a poor reason not to hire an otherwise qualified programmer, and "I
know language X" is a poor reason to hire an otherwise unqualified
programmer.

Mike

On May 3, 2:28*pm, Dave <d...@comteck.com> wrote:
Yep, I can believe that. Odd that it didn't occur to anybody to teach
some of them Modula-GM. I doubt Indian programmers have a genetic
propensity towards C and away from anything else.

Mike

Mike Silva wrote:
Ahh, still thinking technical rather than economic--got to break you of
that! It costs money to train them and they already knew C. And
training would have been an open-ended proposition at best, undesirable
and unattractive at worst (from their viewpoint). Their employment
model (late 90's and maybe still) was to work for a few months then go
to another company which would offer them more money for their
experience, so training would have been open-ended. And learning MGM
would not have helped them at their next company, thus undesirable.

We did use them for 3-4 efforts involving MGM, and never got even one of
the previous people we had worked with even a couple months before. So
we trained them every time.


~Dave T~

On May 3, 6:57*pm, Dave <d...@comteck.com> wrote:
OK, I'm going to try and think economic now.

Give them more money to stick around and stop the revolving door?

How'd I do?

Hey, I realize it's a messy picture. But what other branch of
engineering lets the engineers use less efficient, more error-prone
tools because they can get cheaper (up front, at least) employees that
way? That's all part of the non-rationality pervading the whole
question.

Mike