[seabird]

The Patriot failures were the result of floating point error. Ada provides facilities specifically to deal with this, while you're left rolling your own in C/C++. Of course Ada won't save you from human bugs, but it's silly to say that you're no better off with a language giving you everything it can to avoid them than one that is a notorious fuckup dispenser.

[FirmwareBurner]

1. How is Ada better at floating point than C++?

2. In mission critical systems we always used fixed point fractional numbers in C as a representation of floats, to avoid floating point issues, so any issues of the language are moot.

[seabird]

In respect to both points, Ada provides decimal and binary fixed point representations as a first class feature of the language, and in the event you must use floating point, SPARK provides the capability to prove that you're not running into rough edges. It's actually one of the most immediately noticeable features of the language for a firmware developer coming from C, and I'm a bit surprised you don't know about it.

Of course I know that you can do all of this stuff in C. I did it for years. I just don't think there's any sort of honor or expression of skill in getting your balls busted by this stuff being an afterthought, it's just annoying. I know your response will be "get better", and I did, countless people have, and we all still appreciate that these nuisances can be taken care of by the language.