Those are standard restrictions for embedded real-time systems, especially if the language itself doesn't offer guarantees on tail-call optimization (like the ML family, Erlang and others do). You have to guarantee the behavior of the program, and recursion (especially unbounded memory usage as in many C implementations) can royally screw things up. You may still have infinite loops because of an error in a for loop's terminating condition, but without dynamic memory and exploding stack usage you'll at least have enough memory left to deal with it when the watchdog timer kicks in.
Comments
I'm interested what computer languages do they use today for space vehicles?
I place my bet on static-type :D ( joke )
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339999
WOW ! << Do not use direct or indirect recursion. Do not use dynamic memory allocation after task initialization. >>
I think they should use COBOL, it's built in :)
Those are standard restrictions for embedded real-time systems, especially if the language itself doesn't offer guarantees on tail-call optimization (like the ML family, Erlang and others do). You have to guarantee the behavior of the program, and recursion (especially unbounded memory usage as in many C implementations) can royally screw things up. You may still have infinite loops because of an error in a for loop's terminating condition, but without dynamic memory and exploding stack usage you'll at least have enough memory left to deal with it when the watchdog timer kicks in.