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Your average scripter likely isn't writing a whole lot of proofs or going through the rigors of formal program verification, generally. Which is fine because your average scripter also isn't writing software for jet airliners or nuclear power plants or robotic surgeons. But somebody is—and the odds are pretty good that your life has been in their hands very recently. How do you know they're not a complete hack ?
Well, you don't really. Which prompts the question: How is this sort of code tested? It was a short blog post written by Gene Spafford, a professor of computer science at Purdue University, that inspired this particular asking of the question.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-is-critical-life-or-death-software-tested
[Related]: They Write the Right Stuff by Charles Fishman at Fast Company
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday June 03 2015, @10:21PM
There is a point there, some safety critical applications have not been appropriately treated as such. Perhaps I should have said that where applications HAVE been identified as such, appropriate methodologies have been applied and it hasn't been a problem.
I don't see how licensing for such applications can help if they aren't correctly categorized in the first place, and it is clearly not needed where they have been identified.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 04 2015, @12:17AM
Is this NASA code publicly available? Seems like it would be a good learning tool.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Thursday June 04 2015, @08:24AM
Being open to the public is in NASA's charter but the code is probably not open because of "State Secret" which may or may not be justified but we will never know because we do not get to see the code.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Friday June 05 2015, @01:10PM
Not really - old processors, limited use outside its intended purpose. The special sauce is in the processes used to build said software, anyhow, not in the software itself.
That is all.