On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:15:04 -0400, Roy Smith wrote:

> Carl Banks <pavlovevidence@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Python really isn't suitable for in-flight controls for various
>> reasons, and mission critical concerns is a minor one (systems with
>> less underlying complexity tend to have fewer failure modes). But
>> mostly it's raw throughput: Python is just too slow. Flight control
>> computers have to be powerful enough make a ton of mathematical
>> calculations in a matter of milliseconds, and under strict weight and
>> power constraints. The cost of running 100 times slower than optimal
>> is just too high.
>
> I'm not convinced that's true for all avionics uses.

Of course it's not. I was talking about flight control, not avionics in
general. (Perhaps when single-engine Cessnas go digital we'll even see
flight controllers in Python.)


Carl Banks