>After watching that talk, I would have loved somebody in the audience to point out instance like this https://raygun.com/blog/10-costly-software-errors-history

>After watching that talk, I would have loved somebody in the audience to point out instance like this https://raygun.com/blog/10-costly-software-errors-history/ https://raygun.com/blog/10-costly-software-errors-history/ and ask for Hickey's comments. Needless to say I really don't agree with that list, as history shows the inconsistency, typos, lack basic units and the ability to express them in a computation etc., have been more catastrophic than he believes them to be. From the list you cite, only three of 10 errors are caused by "typos", "lack of basic units" and type errors. And this is just a particular list. Recalling Rich Hickey list, the things that cause more problem in code, from worst to less damaging: Domain Complexity Misconception 10x Place Oriented Programming Weak support for information Brittleness/Coupling Language model complexity Parochialism/context weak support for Names Distribution Resource utilization Runtime intangibility Libraries Concurrency 10x Inconsistency Typos I'm pretty sure that if we compile a list of real-life cases where the major reasons of failure according to Rich Hickey have caused trouble, the list of examples would be immense, compared to "typos".