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We build lots of computing systems that rarely have components crash and almost never (eg, not even once over decades) have the whole system go down. We know ho
by SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
We build lots of computing systems that rarely have components crash and almost never (eg, not even once over decades) have the whole system go down. We know how to do it.
It's just not worth the effort in the vast majority of circumstances -- so you get computer crashes.
- jacquesm 10y agoI know we know how to do it. It's just that the cost-benefit analysis usually falls to 'let it crash' rather than 'let it crash and put a supervisor on top of it'. Besides the fact that most developers don't care too much about their stuff crashing (for instance: one valid excuse for not digging in and solving a problem is 'can't reproduce', whereas those are the worst problems to allow to persist). In the end it is all economics. But I really would like to see some real life stats on how these self driving cars perform over the longer term in less controlled situations and with an honest accounting of the root cause of any issues. Fat chance that will ever happen but that's the sort of rigor that would get me to switch from driving myself to being driven by a pile of software. That's the good bit about Google being involved: at least they really 'grok' software and reliability engineering. As opposed to your average car manufacturer where software is a dirty word best outsourced to some contractor.