Esterel / Scade : elegant mathematics to make reliable programmes

It all started with a robot car race : how could these cars be programmed to beat their competitors ? Eighteen years later, the new programming language invented by two researchers from the École des Mines (who did not intend to enrich the computer world but simply to win the race) is being used industrially in numerous applications. Most of these applications are critical in terms of security and can be found in sectors as varied as aerospace, aeronautics, the car industry, nuclear power stations, and the electronic component sector. The passage from research to manufacture of the products was made by following the trends of technological progress and also by being aware of the changing needs of end-users whose growing preoccupation is to develop high performance and perfectly reliable applications with the minimum amount of constraint and the maximum degree of flexibility.