[SystemSafety] Safety and programming languages

Derek M Jones derek at knosof.co.uk
Wed Mar 16 11:59:40 CET 2022


Stefano,

> I'm looking forward at using ADA and Rust in real development, while up to now we only did PoC and Academic stuff. 

I have always been a fan of the the runtime checks performed
by languages such as Ada (I do wish other languages would
support subranges).

Runtime checks such as array bounds checking are also
touted as a benefit by the Rust community.  For years
array bounds checking has been supported by C compilers,
but rarely used or talked about.

What advantages do you see with Rust, compared to C, when
using compilers that do the runtime checking that Rust performs?
The benefits appear to be small, but I am not a Rust expert.

My experience with runtime checks is that they get switched
off in production code.  Reasons include performance and
issues with handling a runtime error (many such errors
don't change program behavior if left unchecked).

Do you plan to leave runtime checking on in your production
code?

-- 
Derek M. Jones           Evidence-based software engineering
blog:https://shape-of-code.com


More information about the systemsafety mailing list