Using Java in Avionics and UAV Applications

Though developers of avionics software are among the most conservative in the software engineering community, and rightly so, Java is beginning to penetrate even this very specialized industry. The reasons are compelling. Java, designed in the 1990s, offers much better abstraction and stronger object-oriented encapsulation than C and C++. Rigorous enforcement of the type system reduces software engineering errors. Built-in syntactic and library features make multithreaded programming on multi-core processors straightforward. And the popularity of Java makes it easier to recruit Java developers, to license Java development tools, and to find and reuse off-the-shelf software components. Finally, the Java platform offers portability and scalability benefits that far exceed what has been achieved with more traditional legacy languages.