Python for air traffic control?

[D-Man]

On Mon, Jul 02, 2001 at 09:44:04PM -0700, Russ wrote:
| Also for the record, it is probably unlikely that Python will actually
| be used for the application I mentioned. It is not yet considered an
| "established" language by the FAA. However, I am open to new ideas and
| I am willing to advocate it if I am convinced that it is the right
| language for the job. Before doing so, however, I need to be fairly
| sure.

At the very least various designs and algorithms to solve the problem
could be prototyped in Python, then recoded in C for their final
application.  People (I think the timbot is one of them) have said
that by prototyping algorithms in Python you can try out more
algorithms and find the best one in less time and you don't feel so
bad about throwing away the bad algorithms because you didn't spend so
much time coding it.

| You must also understand, of course, that the safety-critical
| application I am referring will not actually be deployed in a critical
| mode for several years at least, during which time it will be
| thoroughly and completely tested. Believe me, I'm talking about more

I would certainly hope so ;-).

| As for Mr. Park's childish question about "which city I work at," what
| can I say? Here in the U.S., ATC is obviously the responsibility of
| the federal government. I suggest he move to Mongolia so he can be
| safe. (That don't have access to comp.lang.python there, do they?)

I should learn about kill files, though that's probably only for
newsreaders and not mutt.  No matter.

-D