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> Anybody rooting a car is betting both their life and those of the people they encounter on their technical skill. Yes? So is every guy who pops his trunk an

• nitrogen 11y ago
  Since upvotes aren't visible, I'll note that I was going to post the same thing. Person puts new brake pads on his/her car, brakes fail (or don't fail), same thing.
• wpietri 11y ago
  Sure, and if you are negligent in making modifications to your car, you will be liable. Mechanics regularly receive criminal charges when their actions cause deaths. There are three new things here. One is that automotive mechanical systems are relatively well understood. If you are a mechanic working on a car, it was literally designed for that. The manufacturer makes manuals explaining how to do it well, and they sell extra parts that are meant to be swapped in. There is a century or so of evolved practice an understanding here. This is not true with drive-by-wire software, which is certainly novel, and is frequently terrible. The second is that mechanical stuff is generally linear and easy to understand. If I change a lightbulb, I have a pretty good understanding of what that will affect and what it won't. Software is highly non-linear. A novice working on, e.g., a device driver, can have effects they will find extremely surprising. The third is that in software we have a long culture of consequence-free tinkering. We're used to being able to power-cycle something, to restore from backup, to just re-install the OS. Any software person is going to have a lot of habits and biases that become extremely dangerous when working with life-critical systems.