Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tristan Wibberley Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++ Subject: =?UTF-8?B?UmU6IOKAnElzIEMrKyBEZWFkP+KAnQ==?= Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2026 23:35:34 +0000 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 72 Message-ID: <10p4rca$mbi0$1@dont-email.me> References: <10ocs1m$508e$1@dont-email.me> <10ov57f$18lli$1@paganini.bofh.team> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2026 23:35:39 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="8c81459e4c13fbefc099e362efc63135"; logging-data="732736"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/VoV1l2vtB1ubX8UgWqtzgvabvR2/tfyH54MGSLdVBXw==" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:BrytW1DvCg3nLwCCObzV0JWF9oU= In-Reply-To: <10ov57f$18lli$1@paganini.bofh.team> Content-Language: en-GB Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.ada:59668 comp.lang.c++:123576 On 12/03/2026 19:46, Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester wrote: > Lynn McGuire wrote: > |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| > |"“Is C++ Dead?” | > | https://deepengineering.substack.com/p/is-c-dead | > | | > |“[. . .] | > |[ . .] C++ is the main | > |programming language used in many critical systems, including hospitals, | > |cars, and airplanes. [. . .] | > |[. . .] | > |[. ..]”" | > |-------------------------------------------------------------------------| > > Oh dear! > (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!) Yes it's terrifying. There are industry standard restrictions in place, organisation restrictions, project restrictions, and requirements from customers often list specific segments of code that must be used as a consequence of previous failures where a fix was decided was thereafter a must (I suppose that's just for liability's sake, it takes more than mere usage of a code segment to confer safety consequences on a project's outputs). Processes use lots of tools, testing and review methods, it's not just coding and job-done. There are literally dozens of studious, expensive steps and that's just in automotive, the lowliest of the fields quoted-in above. Training and other knowledge-management and habit-forming techniques are applicable throughout. It's still hair-raising despite that. I worked in automotive software engineering for a time and it gave me fewer hairs to raise and I didn't stay long enough to get combed into an automotive software engineer - just long enough to recognise the incredible breadth and depth of problems, expertise, focus, risk-management, steadfastness, pushback, pace, etc... If you meet an engineer in those fields do not be surprised that they earn more than you. Safe software engineering is almost nothing to do with C++; I suspect C++ is used for reasons of historical evolution of assurance combined with matters of the employment market rather than any other reasons. I feel very few people understand anything of what makes safety-critical software engineering safe and it has almost nothing to do with the language chosen for the encoding of machine instructions because ultimately it's a process of translation of /requirements/ to machine instructions. In fact it's a process of translation of goals and market gambles into requirements even before that. AI in those fields has unique challenges other than mere high-level system control-logic encoding which C++ /does/ /NOT/ lend itself to, I doubt Ada does either. Test discipline is very important there and I would expect if I went back by now I'd find no low-level coding tools used for AI project engineering processes (only for the tools used). -- Tristan Wibberley The message body is Copyright (C) 2026 Tristan Wibberley except citations and quotations noted. All Rights Reserved except that you may, of course, cite it academically giving credit to me, distribute it verbatim as part of a usenet system or its archives, and use it to promote my greatness and general superiority without misrepresentation of my opinions other than my opinion of my greatness and general superiority which you _may_ misrepresent. You definitely MAY NOT train any production AI system with it but you may train experimental AI that will only be used for evaluation of the AI methods it implements.