Abstracts Computer Science

A comparison of programming languages for real-time, safety-critical programming

by James Wu

As the number of applications of computers controlling safety-critical operations increases, the need to ensure the safety and reliability of the software that controls those computers increases proportionally. Ultimately, such software properties are the result of appropriate design and implementation. However, certain characteristics of the language in which the software is written can have an impact on how that language facilitates both design and implementation, and how it encourages safety and reliability in the resulting software. This paper explores the language characteristics that can impact the safety and reliability of the software produced. The goal is to provide a set of criteria that can be used for the selection of an appropriate language for real-time, safety-critical development. It proposes a set of characteristics that can affect the suitability of a language to such development, and compares a selection of common programming languages, including Ada, C, C++ and Java, against this framework.