This month I want to highlight a white paper by NASA, The Power of Ten – Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code. This paper is fascinating because these rules are critical for NASA to ensure safety yet they don’t all apply to the code we create. These coding rules cast a light on differences in how good code is created across different domains – SOA, games, NASA shuttles, etc.

http://spinroot.com/gerard/pdf/P10.pdf

“To support strong checking, the rules are somewhat strict – one might even say Draconian. The trade-off, though, should be clear. When it really counts, especially in the development of safety critical code, it may be worth going the extra mile and living within stricter limits than may be desirable. In return, we should be able to demonstrate more convincingly that critical software will work as intended.”