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Mike Gaskey wrote: Testing was thorough
Well, human safety seems to implie that human life could be at stake...
You should see the remarks we sometimes get when the client is doing SAT.
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I work in a company that develops control & simulation software for oil and gas pipelines.
I have not written any code that opens and closes the valves and the like but I have created control displays that show different data points. Based on those, the operators make decision as to what to do, so you can say I've done mission critical programming.
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And if this realtime requirements get more momentum, catch up a blatant cheap outsourcing spree, we can have more hilarity in the forums 'Urgent. Give me code for Injection Management System'.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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I wonder how many base jumpers there are that are also programmers.
Bjørn M
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Worked on a DOS based app that collected data that monitored babies in a nursery or NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), and would set alarms and alert the nurse's station if anything went wrong. It actually used sound cards for collecting the data... sound blaster 16's I think, back in the day. Yikes. I didn't have kids at the time, I think I would have been a bit more nervous if I had. Was weird seeing the modern equivalent monitoring my first son when he was in the NICU after he was born (he's 4 years old and fine now).
We kept trying to call it Babycomm but the company who contracted us didn't like it.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely,
But thank you for your concern,
Here's wishing you a Happy New Year."
I wished him one back in return.
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I have worked on maintaining diabetes support applications. It greatly helps diabetes patients, but I don't think it will be used in life or death situations. Patients still rely on their doctors and medication and only use the application to make it easier for them to keep track of bloodglucose measurements, etc.
It does give me a feeling that I am doing something useful
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Tell that to my wife. Her doctor changed the types and quantities one day, and the next day I had to race the ambulance to my house when she was in diabetic shock.
Currently, my wife's management is done on a week to week basis, powered by Excel. Her glucose control is now considered Very Good
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It may sound really bad, but doctors are sadly still human too.
I hope all is well now and hope that doesn't happen again.
I personally think that it is a good thing that diabetes patients have all these ways of helping them to keep track of their personal health. Be it an excelsheet or an application.
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I presently have a big hand in developing code which will ultimately assist autopilot functionality in small sport aircraft (e.g., Cessna). If knowing that if you reverse a couple reception bits and coming up with a completely wrong sensor value and thus, the aircraft doing unexpected (and potentially fatal) things isn't pressure, I don't know WHAT is!
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I see there are a lot of people developing very interesting software. Which computer programming languages do you mainly use for your software developing in this area? I would say that if you have a standard hardware, then the computer programming language Assembly would be interesting, but otherwise I wouldn't wonder if you prefer Ada or Haskell.
Have a nice day on!
Like an angel without a sense of mercy.
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Most of my apps are .Net based; and written in C or VB. I do quite a bit of javascripting when needed, but I prefer server side code for my internet apps
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You definitely noticed that the question was just about computer programming languages for software critical to human safety?
Like an angel without a sense of mercy.
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Noticed it I did- I have migrated from the designed-for-and-used-by single user applications to net based services that are being called upon by the emergency services sector internationally
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Many moons ago I attended the launch party for Office XP and got a copy of that and of MapPoint 2002. I started up a DB project which had everyones addresses in Access when I became a volunteer FF- so I extended it by adding in the MapPoint Control. Soon I had my own navigation system.
As nothing is never good enough, I expanded the DB to contain the hazardous materials kept at local facilities (eg acetylene at the local garage) and I extended the mapping portion to draw out evacuation zones if whatever was spilled
Now that everyone and their brother has access to online mapping and imagery, I have migrated to using SQL for the backend and I am using MS Virtual Earth for the display, to the point that I have a working version that will plot in 3D the plume released from a spill
The neat thing was that in the metro areas where there is 3D imagery available, you can have situations where the ground floor is in the evacuation area but the roof is safe
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I do software systems for fire and gas detection/protection and emergency shutdown systems. Most in PLC logic and some (well tested) C. An oil rig dumping it's entire inventory of oil and gas to flare is an amazing sight
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yes, this kinda of stuff only works with PLC.
try the same with .net or windows and you have a diaster
C#, ASPX, SQL, novice to NHibernate
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balazs_hideghety wrote: try the same with .net or windows and you have a diaster
You might be surprise at the number of processes controlled by PC based windows applications. Most are supervisory applications rather than hard real-time, but the use of windows and even .NET applications is quite common for tasks that don't require pre-emptive RT or hard 365/24/7.
Most large scale industrial control systems use windows in several capicties, like the HMI, and the build/load/supervision environment for embedded controllers. Some even do direct process control (mostly for slow processes where fast response is not a big deal).
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I do the ballistics for rockets. It is my job to make sure they land where the user wants them to, and do not run into mountains on the way. (Olive-green rockets that go bang when they land.)
Obviously I do more testing than coding. (Testing rocket launchers is rather fun, as a matter of fact, if you have earplugs.)
Before you ask, no, I have no problems at all working in this industry. Because of us there has been no war in Europe for 60 years - that is a record.
Bibo ergo sum
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RedSonja wrote: there has been no war in Europe for 60 years
What about former Yugoslavia? Don't you think the conflict there was a regular war, or don't you count balkan to be a part of Europe?
Of course, this discussion belongs to soapbox, but I couldn't resist when I saw such a statement.
Regards,
Zdenek
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Quite right, mea culpa.
Let's amend it to Western Europe...
-------------
Bibo ergo sum
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when I was at school , we did some research on ballistics too, it is very interesting and we use matlab do a lot of simulations. and we often enjoying discuss NMD & TMD, we treat these as the maths problems,
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What about the guy who wrote the software for those lethal injection machines they have in some countries where the patient presses "yes" to receive a lethal injection.
His software is critical to human life. If he screws up and something goes wrong, people live!
Simon
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Simon Stevens wrote: If he screws up and something goes wrong, people live!
And the service provider would be screwed as well with a million dollar law suit.
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar
Personal Homepage Tech Gossips
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts... --William Shakespeare
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A couple of years ago I worked on a small team developing helicopter dispatching and tracking software for real-time emergencies. It's about as front line stuff as you would want to get. Every second can be critical. Pretty intense stuff.
Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
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