shame on MISRA

In news:oLSPh.494$r4.70@newsfe1-gui.ntli.net timestamped Sun, 01 Apr
2007 18:22:12 GMT, ChrisQuayle <nospam@devnul.co.uk> posted:
"[..]

How can you make any comparison if you have no knowledge of the
standard. [..]"

You do have a point that this certainly limits my ability. I am
however aware that C without MISRA is unsafe and full Ada is unsafe
and that full Ada is not nearly as bad as full C. True, one could
argue that a subset of C could be safer than some subset of
Ada. However, some restrictions (such as requiring no dead (never
reachable) code in a switch statement) can not happen in Ada, so I am
not convinced that starting by placing restrictions on something which
was far less suitable as a starting point is a good approach.


" To put this into perspective, it costs only approx 10.00 uk
pounds,"

That is a pretty sane price.


" less that you would pay for [..] beers."

As I am responsible, the price of the MISRA C standard is infinitely
times more than I would pay for such poison that impairs the faculty
of prudent judgment, impaired to such an extent that people are not
able to safely drive cars with MISRA C. Have I detected the reason you
are so defensive of MISRA C?


" Isn't such an
effort worth something in terms of professional development ?."

Yes, but ultimately I really doubt that the greatness of Ada will be
unproven by MISRA C and Ada is fit for purpose and I own hundreds of
monetary units' worth of other books for my professional development
which I do not have time to read promptly.



"In any case, your logic is flawed. It doesn't follow that because one
object in a class of objects is available at no cost, all the rest of
the objects in that class should be free, which in effect is what you
are arguing."

True. MISRA C contains something worth hiding, and charging money for
it is one way to deter people from it. Or should I mention that my
pro-C++ tutor does not wave around a bought copy of the C++ standard
when saying that he hoped that I would inject C++ into our code?

The MISRA C standard may cost money for a valid reason. I have a valid
reason to use another standard instead without needing to pay for
it. If I needed to pay for some standard, I could, if I needed it
(e.g. VHDL (though actually I think that some of the VHDL ex-standards
and maybe the VHDL standard eventually became free on the ludicrously
inadequate and usually not gratis IEEEXplore)), but in the MISRA C
versus Ada debate I see nothing to convince me that MISRA C is
worthwhile and that being the case, it is not a good advertisement for
spending money on it.



"> I am paid entirely by taxes as a researcher, so of course all of my
> current work should be available for no extra charge and subject to peer revi
ew
> and criticism. My tutors do not agree. Other work I had done was for a
> private former employer which has the right to choose whether or not that wor
k
> is open source and whether or not that work is free to others. One
> thing such a former employer can not do is choose for that work to be
> free to the former employer because I had already been paid.
 >

If you are a researcher, perhaps you would care to comment further on
the outrageous charges for online research reports these days, both
current and historical. Much of the work originally funded by the
taxpayer, but being openly sold at prices that make them inaccessable to
all but well heeled individuals or large organisations. $25 to $50 per
report, or several thousand dollars per annum is not unusual, for stuff
that has already been paid for. The results of publicly finded research
should be available at cost to anyone who wishes to access it,  but
that's far from the case now. [..] a greedy, grasping attitude.

[..]"


As I made clear, the greed and unaccountability and secretiveness of
researchers is a disgrace. I do not restrict this complaint to "online
research". I do not really seem to have anything else to say about that.



"[..]

[..] C++ may have a role for consumer electronics
applications, where recovery is usually power off and reboot, but is it
really ready or appropriate for mission critical work ?..."

I do not know whether this is really true, but in the so-called
Republic of Ireland I shockingly heard of one deployed (and not
recalled) life-critical embedded medical software product which is
very crash prone, but which is designed to have a very quick reboot
time (far less than one second) such that it is expected that crashing
does not make the product unsafe. The person who claimed this said
that for his own work (business-critical but not life-critical and not
medical), he similarly does not bother to design his software so well
that it will not crash frequently, and that he tries to have data
structures in such a way that they are resilient to corruption from crashes.

In article <eup314$b0v$2@newsserver.cilea.it>, Colin Paul Gloster 
<Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes
>In news:XJyPONLf08DGFAJo@phaedsys.demon.co.uk timestamped Sun, 1 Apr
>2007 16:17:51 +0100, Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> posted:
>"In article <KFPPh.4279$YL5.1826@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net>, Vladimir
>Vassilevsky <antispam_bogus@hotmail.com> writes
>[..]
>>
>>It is not a question. The sane embedded engineer must use C++.
>
>Please expand... this is not a troll but I am interested in  your
>reasoning though I am assuming you are not suggesting C++ for PIC's and
>8051's etc"
>
>
>You have been aware that vendors claim to support some of C++ for
>PIC's and 8051's.

Until you find some sensible way of replying so your text and quotes are 
distinguishable it is pointless trying to reply. It gets unreadable.



-- 
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

In article <eup71u$bd5$1@newsserver.cilea.it>, Colin Paul Gloster 
<Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes
>As I am responsible, the price of the MISRA C standard is infinitely
>times more than I would pay for such poison that impairs the faculty
>of prudent judgment, impaired to such an extent that people are not
>able to safely drive cars with MISRA C.


Can you justify that statement?  You are disagreeing with many experts.


>True. MISRA C contains something worth hiding,

What?

> and charging money for
>it is one way to deter people from it.

The only people who say this are people like you who decry MISRA-C but 
use the cost as an excuse for not having read the standard they are 
de-crying.

>The MISRA C standard may cost money for a valid reason.

It cost a lot to develop.


-- 
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Chris Hills wrote:
> 
> In article <eup314$b0v$2@newsserver.cilea.it>, Colin Paul Gloster
> <Colin_Paul_Gloster@ACM.org> writes
> >In news:XJyPONLf08DGFAJo@phaedsys.demon.co.uk timestamped Sun, 1 Apr
> >2007 16:17:51 +0100, Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> posted:
> >"In article <KFPPh.4279$YL5.1826@newssvr29.news.prodigy.net>, Vladimir
> >Vassilevsky <antispam_bogus@hotmail.com> writes
> >[..]
> >>
> >>It is not a question. The sane embedded engineer must use C++.
> >
> >Please expand... this is not a troll but I am interested in  your
> >reasoning though I am assuming you are not suggesting C++ for PIC's and
> >8051's etc"
> >
> >
> >You have been aware that vendors claim to support some of C++ for
> >PIC's and 8051's.
> 
> Until you find some sensible way of replying so your text and quotes are
> distinguishable it is pointless trying to reply. It gets unreadable.

I agree.  If he doesn't defensive plonks seem the only answer.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>



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Simon Clubley wrote:
> Vladimir Vassilevsky <antispam_bogus@hotmail.com> writes:
>>
>> I don't mind using Ada, but where are the compilers? This looks
>> like another perfectly designed still born thing.
> 
> Ada is available as part of GCC.
> 
> You can either use a FSF distribution of GCC, which has no
> restrictions on what you can use the Ada compiler for, or you can
> use a packaged distribution from ACT, which is restricted to GPL
> only projects.
> 
> See https://libre.adacore.com/ for the packaged version. Note that
> I've no experience with this distribution because I prefer to use
> the FSF distributions so that I'm not restricted in what I can use
> the compiler for.

I see no restrictions on that page.  I believe any such are not
compatible with GPL licensing, which it claims.

-- 
Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
   Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
   <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>



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On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 14:04:23 +0100, Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org>
wrote:

>Ada was NOT FREE It cost the US government several million pounds. The 
>only reason it was "Free" is because the US government wanted everyone 
>to use this language on US military projects.

Ada was an investment by the US government in order to directly reduce
software acquisition and reliability costs. 

However, by making the Ada specification generally available, it was
hoped that Ada would be used also outside US DoD projects. 

When there are other companies using the same tools as the traditional
military contractors, this could increase competition also in DoD
contracts, thus pushing prices down.

Clearly, this was an investment that failed at least partially. The
Ada project should not be considered as some kind of subsidy to the IT
industry.

Paul

On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:22:12 GMT, ChrisQuayle <nospam@devnul.co.uk>
wrote:

>How can you make any comparison if you have no knowledge of the 
>standard. To put this into perspective, it costs only approx 10.00 uk 
>pounds, less that you would pay for a round of beers. Isn't such an 
>effort worth something in terms of professional development ?.

Apparently you expect to sell thousands of these, if you expect to
cover even the handling costs :-). 

Paul

Op Sat, 31 Mar 2007 03:00:12 +0200 schreef Robert Adsett  =

<sub2@aeolusdevelopment.com>:
> In article <op.tpz0ggkky6p7a2@ragnarok.lan>, Boudewijn Dijkstra says..=
.
>> Op Thu, 29 Mar 2007 16:48:48 +0200 schreef Vladimir Vassilevsky
>> <antispam_bogus@hotmail.com>:
>> > u8 variable;
>> > variable =3D (u8)(variable + 1);
>> >
>> > u16 variable;
>> > variable =3D (u8)(variable + 1);
>> >
>> > So here is a bug. No warnings.
>>
>> That is why some C compilers (and some C-like languages/compilers too=
)
>> have the typeof operator.
>
> OK, I give up.  How does typeof help here?

Conversion to whatever the correct type is, would be as easy as:

variable =3D (typeof(variable)) (variable + 1);


More at:
http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Typeof.html



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In article <tk3113t2vc3e6vc4onqnmqamlqkml5esh1@4ax.com>, Paul Keinanen 
<keinanen@sci.fi> writes
>On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:22:12 GMT, ChrisQuayle <nospam@devnul.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>How can you make any comparison if you have no knowledge of the
>>standard. To put this into perspective, it costs only approx 10.00 uk
>>pounds, less that you would pay for a round of beers. Isn't such an
>>effort worth something in terms of professional development ?.
>
>Apparently you expect to sell thousands of these, if you expect to
>cover even the handling costs :-).


The printed version costs 25 GBP  (about 45 USD these days) the PDF 
costs the 10GBP

Also several very large companies (IE most of the automotive ones ) bout 
site licenses for the PDF

The aim was not to make money but to cover costs.

It costs a LOT to develop a standard like MISRA-C

-- 
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England     /\/\/\/\/
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org      www.phaedsys.org \/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

On Monday, in article
     <tk3113t2vc3e6vc4onqnmqamlqkml5esh1@4ax.com> keinanen@sci.fi
     "Paul Keinanen" wrote:

>On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 18:22:12 GMT, ChrisQuayle <nospam@devnul.co.uk>
>wrote:
>
>>How can you make any comparison if you have no knowledge of the 
>>standard. To put this into perspective, it costs only approx 10.00 uk 
>>pounds, less that you would pay for a round of beers. Isn't such an 
>>effort worth something in terms of professional development ?.
>
>Apparently you expect to sell thousands of these, if you expect to
>cover even the handling costs :-). 

At those sorts of prices it is a lot easier for many organisations
to at least get the standards, considering how expensive standards
can be. The classic example is VESA, where you need to obtain several
standards to do a job and each one is more than that cost.

-- 
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