No I'm not joking at all. The Autocode feature generates code that has high fidelity to the model in simulink, and is immensely more reliable than a human.

It is impossible for a simulink model to accidentally type `i > 0` when they meant `i >= 0`, for example. Any human who tells you they have not made this mistake is a liar.

Unless there was a second uncommanded acceleration problem with Toyotas, my understanding is that it was caused by poor mechanical design of the accelerator pedal that caused it to get stuck on floor mats.

In any case, when we're talking about safety critical control systems like avionics, it's better to abstract away the actual act of typing code into an editor, because it eliminates a potential source of errors. You verify the model at a higher level, and the code is produced in a deterministic manner.

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fl7305 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> It is impossible for a simulink model to accidentally type `i > 0` when they meant `i >= 0`

The Simulink Coder tool is a piece of software. It is designed and implemented by humans. It will have bugs.

Autogenerated code is different from human written code. It hits soft spots in the C/C++ compilers.

For example, autogenerated code can have really huge switch statements. You know, larger than the 15-bit branch offset the compiler implementer thought was big enough to handle any switch-statement any sane human would ever write? So now the switch jumps backwards instead when trying to get the the correct case-statement.

I'm not saying that Simulink Coder + a C/C++ compiler is bad. It might be better than the "manual coding" options available. But it's not 100% bug free either.

	▲	stackghost a day ago \| parent [-]
		>But it's not 100% bug free either. Nobody said it was bug free, and this is a straw man argument of your own construction. Using Autocode completely eliminates certain types of errors that human C programmers have continued to make for more than half a century.

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mmooss a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> It is impossible for a simulink model to accidentally type `i > 0` when they meant `i >= 0`

That's a classic bias: Comparing A and B, show that B doesn't have some A flaws. If they are different systems, of course that's true. But it's also true that A doesn't have some B flaws. That is, what flaws does Autocode have that humans don't?

The fantasy that machines are infallible - another (implicit) argument in this thread - is just ignorance for any professional in technology.

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coderenegade 21 hours ago | parent [-]

What's the difference between autogenerated C code and compiling to assembly or machine code? Seems academic to me.

The main flaw of autocode is that a human can't easily read and validate it, so you can't really use it as source code. In my experience, this is one of the biggest flaws of these types of systems. You have to version control the file for whatever proprietary graphical programming software generated the code in the first place, and as much as we like to complain about git, it looks like a miracle by comparison.

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mmooss 21 hours ago | parent [-]

> What's the difference between autogenerated C code and compiling to assembly or machine code? Seems academic to me.

It's an interesting question and point, but those are two different things and there is no reason to think you'll get the same results. Why not compile from natural language, if that theory is true?

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_flux 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Natural language does not have a specification, while both C and assembly do.

	▲	mmooss 18 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The C specification is orders of magnitude more complex and is much less defined than assembly. Arguably, the same could be said comparing natural language with C. I admit that's mostly philosphical. But I think saying 'C can autogenerate reliable assembly, therefore a specification can autogenerate reliable C' is also about two different problems.