There also used to be a website that ranked programming languages according to various parameters (which is faster, which is safer) by asking visitors pairwise comparisons (Which is faster - Matlab or C?). I was going to link it but can't find it unfortunately. Anyway I'm pretty sure C would come second-last in the safety ranking, right above assembly.
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We used Linux/C so we didn't kill people.
I'm not sure that C the best language for life critical high level applications... it's far too easy to shoot yourself in the foot.
What alternative would you recommend?
Pretty much anything!! Java, C#, Rust, Go, OCaml, Lisp, ... even C++ would be a much better choice.
Check this out: http://tobyho.com/2008/03/30/how-safe-is-your-programming/
There also used to be a website that ranked programming languages according to various parameters (which is faster, which is safer) by asking visitors pairwise comparisons (Which is faster - Matlab or C?). I was going to link it but can't find it unfortunately. Anyway I'm pretty sure C would come second-last in the safety ranking, right above assembly.
Ada, frankly.