A safety controller designed to control an automated installation having a plurality of sensors and a plurality of actuators. A method for generating a user program for the safety controller comprises the step of generating a source code having a number of control instructions for controlling the actuators and having a number of diagnosis instructions for producing diagnosis reports. Safety-related program variables are processed in failsafe fashion during execution of the control instructions. A machine code is generated on the basis of the source code. At least one checksum is determined for at least some of the machine code. The diagnosis instructions are ignored for the determination of the checksum.