JF-17/FC-1 Fighter Aircraft thread

[Tam]

He seems to think that 1.7 million lines of code is somewhat a big puff. The operating system in your phone is at least 15 to 20 million lines of code. Apps go up to over 200 million lines. And yet they are surprisingly manageable, because they are meant to be that way --- the very enterprise depends on it. It is part of the discipline and profession of being a developer and a software engineer. The whole evolution of programming languages focuses heavily on modularity, reusability and expression.

designing an aircraft and bringing it operational status is just some plug & play or installing a new app on your mobile!

But that is exactly what the business of software is, making things simple and plug and play. That is why open architectures, standardized buses and interfaces are for. That's why languages express object modularity and feature reusable libraries. And the very act of installing and executing a new app in your mobile, while very easy to the user, is extremely complex underneath, talking about things like virtual machines, pseudo or byte code, dynamic runtime or compiles. The complexity of software is counter intuitive to its appearance --- the more easier a software appears to be, the more complex it is underneath.

I personally understand that principle, but I question the nature in which the practice of more complex avionics may prolong or complicate things such as integration of new systems.
The degree to which a system is designed to be open architecture, modular, and/or the way in which different systems may have been designed or implemented to mitigate or minimize mutual interference are confounding factors.

There should be no piece of system software or any coder worth his or her body salt, in this day and age, that isn't based on an open architecture, is modular, and features reusable libraries. Going contrary to that, you might as regress decades and write COBOL and BASIC with all your GOTOs.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

Only people that have never been hands on with software engineering would think a few millions lines of code is an impressive measure of complexity. There are simple web applications with over 10 million lines of code these days.. a project with a few million lines can easily be entrusted to interns to be able to hop on and contribute to right away. A competent professional software engineer would be unfazed by 100M lines of code. So citing something like 8 million lines of code as a complex project is absolutely laughable.

 

[FriedRiceNSpice]

… because some of us still deal in facts and not fantasies or fallacies.

No, some people deal with logic and real hands on experience, while others can only deal with random meaningless facts.

 

[Pmichael]

Every software engineer worth a shit would call the number of code meaningless.

We are talking about critical systems written in ADA. You can't compare that to a mere iOS app which is bloated by all kind of stuff.

 

[Franklin]

Every software engineer worth a shit would call the number of code meaningless.

We are talking about critical systems written in ADA. You can't compare that to a mere iOS app which is bloated by all kind of stuff.

I read that the JF-17 Thunder uses the C++ programming language rather than the ADA. The reason for this is to allow the jets program to gain access to the large numbers of civilian programmers.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

Most of the lines of code used in your phone or video game are puff used purely for graphics. This is why the Space shuttle and older fighters got away with 16 bit processors.
F35 has 8 million lines of code 24 million if you included support system.
You average car has functions that you would never ever find in a fighter jet. Like, fuel economy and environmental protection, Music, ride quality, graphics, Road maps, language and font features, climate control, chair adjustment, electronic locking, car alarm, Cruise control, Anti lock breaking, power windows and locks, driver assistance. As a result the lines of code go up but most of it is pure fluff meant to make sitting in traffic easier.

 

[vincent]

You still don't get what a straw man fallacy argument means. It is beyond my capability to help you then.

You were the one made the huge deal out of "MILLIONS!!!" lines of code. You don't get nowadays millions of lines of code is nothing

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

It is a straw man as again most of those millions of lines of code in civil systems are graphics and comfort based.
The systems on fighters like the JF17 are actually very low code line as much of it is simple calculations with an incredibly simple interface. No frills computing.

 

[Tam]

Most of the lines of code used in your phone or video game are puff used purely for graphics. This is why the Space shuttle and older fighters got away with 16 bit processors.

You absolutely have no idea. In a game, graphics are often panned out as calls to a library or is done by the game engine. Depending on what kind of game you are developing they may often use AI algorithms. There are also tons of code in the server back end, including motion prediction.

 

[Tam]

Every software engineer worth a shit would call the number of code meaningless.

We are talking about critical systems written in ADA. You can't compare that to a mere iOS app which is bloated by all kind of stuff.

The US DoD still uses ADA, which has been revised to ADA 2012. A lot of mission critical software written by aerospace companies like Boeing that are also done on civilian applications, such as FBW let's say on a Boeing jet, might still be on ADA. Problem is that few developers know ADA, and its down on the list for language popularity which limits the base of developers the DoD can use.

However, for Europe, China, Russia and the rest of the world, its not likely ADA is used with not even with mission critical code. Europe has used Object Pascal and Modula from what I have heard, while China and Russia might likely use C++, Python and local development language such as Kotlin for the Russians and EPL or Yi for China. Then your typical Javascript and PHP for web; Java, Python, Go (very popular in China), Kotlin, for Android; C# for Windows; Obj C for iOS. But for Chinese military, I would most likely assume C++ would be used, with Python on areas such as facial and image recognition.

Its also known that Chinese and Russian developers are freaking good, the best in the world, with the Chinese just nosing out the Russians in a hair.

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