February 5, 2008
GrammaTech's Paul Anderson in Dr. Dobb's
Dr Dobb's today published an article by GrammaTech's Paul Anderson titled "Detecting Bugs in Safety-Critical Code". An excerpt appears below, with a link to the full article.
Detecting Bugs in Safety-Critical Code
Paul Anderson, VP of Engineering, GrammaTech
When software is used for safety-critical applications, bugs aren't just expensive annoyance - they can kill. Faced with such dire consequences, developers of safety-critical systems go to great lengths to prevent bugs from making it into the field. These measures are undeniably effective at reducing risk. Although there have been some famous catastrophic failures over the years, if medical devices or flight-control systems failed as often as most software fails, the headlines would be much grimmer.
So how do they do it, and how can those of us who do not write safety-critical code emulate their success? Well, there are many strategies, but two stand out as being key and offer important lessons for other developers - static analysis and rigorous testing.
About Grammatech
GrammaTech's static-analysis tools are used worldwide by startups,
Fortune 500 companies, educational institutions, and government
agencies. The staff includes ten researchers with PhDs in programming
languages and program analysis. The company has offices in Ithaca, New
York, and San Jose, California. More information about GrammaTech can
be found at www.grammatech.com.
GrammaTech, Inc.
317 N. Aurora St.
Ithaca, NY 14850 USA
phone: 607-273-7340
fax: 607-273-8752
e-mail: info@grammatech.com