Application Ecosystem for the BlackBerry PlayBook

According to their press release, RIM has officially announced the ecosystem for applications that will run on the PlayBook tablet. Below is a quote from the release:

• BlackBerry PlayBook to support BlackBerry Java and Android apps
• Native C/C++ development support added, in addition to HTML5, Flash and AIR support
• Support from leading game engines: Ideaworks Labs (AirPlay) and Unity Technologies (Unity 3)
• BlackBerry PlayBook becomes a new market opportunity for all the developers who have already created over 25,000 BlackBerry Java apps and more than 200,000 Android apps 

The most important part for me, and something that I've been hoping for a long time, is the added support for Android. What RIM was lacking was an application ecosystem. This will not be the case anymore. And it is not only about Android in the end. Moving away from Java ME is the first step (still need it for existing applications). When you can write applications using HTML, Flash, C/C++, Java ME, and Android, you can't go wrong. There is no other ecosystem out there that provides such a diversity. 

10 Rules for Writing Safety Critical Code

Gerard Holzmann's Ten Rules for Writing Safety Critical Code specifies rules for developing safety critical code in C, rules that improve software reliability and testability. More detailed descriptions can be found in the June 2006 Issue of IEEE Computer, which can be found here. For me, there are other programming languages out there who may be better suited for safety-critical (and real-time) systems, languages like Ada or Erlang. I believe that one important aspect of such systems is to make sure that the routines invoked will take a deterministic amount of time to complete.