Lot's of unit testing I'm sure :)

What languages do those industries use?

There was indeed a lot of unit testing as well as very intense reviews of every single line of code. We used C and Linux as we needed an operating system that wouldn't kill people. You had to have a minimum of twenty years experience to work there. An upside was that there was no pressure at all about shipping the product before it was ready, even though we were well behind schedule. The downside was that you were allowed one mistake in your code. You were fired for the second one.

Why C? Why not something designed for safety like ada?

There's some really good tools out there to help meet DO-178B and beyond. In particular I'm a fan of the Spark toolset, recently GPL'ed.

Interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

I think a lot can be learned from that industry.

1. Write defect free software from the get-go

2. Take your time

...if you're in that industry.

I am curious about why linux would be chosen as the OS instead of something a bit more battle-tested like QNX? (with the upside of the ability to go hard real-time if necessary...) I love Linux, but the thought of trusting my life to it gives me the willies?

What tools did you use? What compiler/target architecture? Was there much turnover? What kinds of bugs got through? You can't just leave it at that.