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P: A programming language for asynchrony, fault-tolerance and uncertainty

microsoft.com

1–10 of 42 posts

Re: P: A programming language for asynchrony, fault-tolerance and uncertainty

#3
It's worth noting that this isn't just a research language -- it's used in practice for writing drivers:

P got its start in Microsoft software development when it was used to ship the USB 3.0 drivers in Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone. These drivers handle one of the most important peripherals in the Windows ecosystem and run on hundreds of millions of devices today. P enabled the detection and debugging of hundreds of race conditions and Heisenbugs early on in the design of the drivers, and is now extensively used for driver development in Windows.

Re: P: A programming language for asynchrony, fault-tolerance and uncertainty

#6
post #3

It's worth noting that this isn't just a research language -- it's used in practice for writing drivers: P got its start in Microsoft software development when it was used to ship the USB 3.0 drivers in Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone. These drivers handle one of the most important peripherals in the Windows ecosystem and run on hundreds of millions of devices today. P enabled the detection and debugging of hundreds of…

This looks SO cool! Kind of like Erlang but at a different level, so you can model both inter-node systems (like Erlang) but also intra-node systems (like USB3 drivers)!

As someone who has been thinking a lot recently about SPARK/Ada and "free" formal verification, can anyone tell me how this language compares on that front? If I write a P program, do I get the ability to "prove" its correctness?

Re: P: A programming language for asynchrony, fault-tolerance and uncertainty

#9
post #2

At last, the long awaited successor to C, at least in the naming convention that assumes P comes after C because of BCPL. (Apologies to Walter Bright: No inference should be drawn that D was not also a good name for that sequence.)

It's a language for expressing protocols. So, P for protocols most likely. It also focuses on safety and ease of analysis. Can't possibly be connected to the C lineage...

Re: P: A programming language for asynchrony, fault-tolerance and uncertainty

#10
post #2

At last, the long awaited successor to C, at least in the naming convention that assumes P comes after C because of BCPL. (Apologies to Walter Bright: No inference should be drawn that D was not also a good name for that sequence.)

L must be lisp, brought here from the future by the space aliens.
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