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Fire Scout has been landing on carriers for 5 years. http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/articles/view/100497

The ADA 'ring' security model which microsoft implemented poorly in NT (by bringing GUI and other userland functions into ring 0)

still makes ADA one of the best platforms for secure realtime systems (think military coms and EW and CCC)

http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/home/article.php?id=100687

-I'm just sayin'

It's fascinating that there are two replies to the GPP, post mentioning using Java in a real-time context, as if that somehow implies that its performance is equivalent to something like C or C++. "Hard real-time" and "fast" are completely different qualities, and having one does not imply the other either way around.

Of course it doesn't, but if you carefully read the replies it states that Java certainly does match C in speed:

"Aonix engineers have demonstrated hard-real-time Java that reaches the run-time efficiency of C and offer true compliance with hard real-time constraints".

This is perfectly clear - speed and real-time capability.

Perhaps you don't believe one source. Here are some more:

http://www.cotsjournalonline.com/home/printthis.ph p?id=100149

"Exemplifying the movement toward Java, Boeing has expressed a clear preference for the technology over other software languages. Winner of the lead system integrator contract for the U.S. Armys Future Combat Systems (FCS) program, Boeing is farming out their FCS requirements and telling suppliers they want to use Java; they dont like C++ and they dont like Ada for any new system development. Many suppliers to FCS are therefore tasked to convert reams of Ada code over to Java."

Boeing use a version of Java that is designed for C performance and real-time work.

Trying programming in Java sometime outside of a website applet, kid, and maybe you will learn something.

Despite the problems involved, we will continue to use Windows for the majority of our PC based products. Yes, Linux is an alternative, and there are those here who think it is the second coming and try to use it where ever possible (thankfully not very many places). It has only been used in a couple of products here, and is not likely to be used often because of its being far harder to setup according to our needs as well as to code for. One shouldn't need a Linux guru to setup a well configured system... something that you can do in your sleep with Windows (especially XP and CE Embedded).

Besides, Linux is not that great of an embedded OS.

Here's an article about using PCI expansion systems (written by a manufacturer of such): Massively Parallel Data Acquisition. By expanding the PCI bus into unique topologies, data recorders can scale in both density and data rate.

Whether that works for shuffling data the other way to PCI graphics cards as well, is left as an exercise for the reader. ;-)

Linux for Embedded Systems? is another more detailed "investigation" into using Linux for embedded environments. The article is written for the COTS Journal by another Green Hills Software Croonie. The ironic thing is that GHS was creating an adaptation layer for Linux to run under their RTOS (Integrity).

Just because a programming language allows a programmer to do stupid things doesn't make it inferior. The things that allow you to do stupid things also make extrememly powerful. Write a device driver/embeded system/OS in Java ... I don't think so.

Hmm. That's exactly what the US Navy intends to do with...you guessed it, Real-Time Java. They are paying handsomely to create a new spec for a safety-critical, real-time, embedable language which they'll call Real-Time Core Java. Checkout this article. (PDF format, sorry)

Why are they doing this? It's mostly due to the perceived cheapness of Java programmers and a desire to write everything in "ths same language." I think some of it is the "Information Week" syndrome and the view that commercial must be better. As an aspiring Ada guru, I am perplexed, but I understand the motivations a little too.

The Ada mandate expired, having mostly completed its mission. The DoD no longer had to support thousands of custom programming languages, but C, C++, and Java were still much more popular with commercial programmers. They are wisely skipping C++ (although it's an option) and moving on to what all of the CS undergrads are being taught. They seem to think that they will be able to get more programmers cheaper.

I think that they're nuts. If a CS graduate can't pick up Ada (or Objective-C, or Oberon, or any other imperative language) and be productive in less than a month, then they are uesless, and their college's accreditation should be revoked for granting a diploma to a bonehead. That said, nobody wants to spend money and time on training, and there are a hell of a lot of commercially available Java libraries in just about every problem domain. *sigh*

I think that this is a bad analogy, as I have seen hard core Java apps that are less than 70k in size (Think Embeded cell phone/PDA apps) thats not an SUV. This guy hates SUV's and he Hates Java so he has equated them. Automatically makes this a bad analogy and more of a rant. In fact In my experience there is not a lot in this life that makes a good analogy to software engineering

Personally I dislike Java, Mainly for its unpredictable garbage collection and all the issues listed in the other comments above dealing with incompatable JVM's,deprecation etc, etc, etc. And I have had some rough experiences in mixing Java with Reused Legacy Code in Other Languages(Situations where Management,Customer and 3'rd Party Vendors don't give a lot of choice as to waht languages you can use)

What really scares me is that there is a big push for a real-time Java for the military in hopes that Ada can be replaced with Java:
Java in Mil Article
J-Consortium
JCP

I don't know if you are referring to scientific journals. Scientific journals typically do not pay, because the people who are publishing have grants from the government, typically, and there are no advertisements.

I am referring to "niche" journals, probably including such journals as COTS, also hobby magazines, technical showcase journals, and thelike, which are chock full of advertisements, but also have quality articles. They need quality articles in order to remain of interest to their customer base, and therefore they will pay.