Originally Posted by
Fly Aiprt
The nagging question is, considering the differences between their "engineering cab" and a real airplane, why were the real software flight tests performed so late (december)?
What kept them from flying the thing and doing ramp tests 6 or 9 months ago?
.
I guess the answer to this question is easy: there was no final version and there still is none. Of course, there was a lot of testing going on, even many flight tests, but they possibly failed to meet requirements. Which means back to the desk to make corrections and try again. Programming by trial and error. Not the safest and not the fastest method, could well be never-ending.
By the way, object oriented languages (like Java, C++ etc. ) cannot be used to program controllers because objects need dynamic memory allocation and lots of memory and adress space are simply not available in controllers. But - used with care - there is nothing wrong with programming in C (like the ubiquitous Arduino) or standard Fortran 4 or even an Assembler, provided the specifications and the code are well documented and kept up to date.