5 ms·

Here, the problem is we can't trust users to not try to break the system. When I buy a plane, I don't want the plane to crash. When I buy a voting machine, I'll

Here, the problem is we can't trust users to not try to break the system. When I buy a plane, I don't want the plane to crash. When I buy a voting machine, I'll do everything I can to break it so as to earn more votes than I deserve. It's a rare case of a system its main customer does want to be able to break. Now, of course we can make things that work. Airplanes and elevators are computing devices too, after all. But a working software is as expensive as a working airplane. People don't want their word processor to cost millions of dollars. OpenOffice is free, MS word is a few bucks, what do you expect?

lev99 8y ago
> It's a rare case of a system its main customer does want to be able to break. Many people would be happy to break ATMs or banking software.
- Arubis 8y ago
  And indeed, they're happy to do just that. https://www.wired.com/2016/05/insane-81m-bangladesh-bank-heist-heres-know/ https://www.wired.com/2016/05/insane-81m-bangladesh-bank-hei...
- sacado2 8y ago
  The main customer of an ATM is the bank owning it. Not sure if "customer" is the correct word, let's say "owner", as opposed to "end user".
timr 8y ago
"Now, of course we can make things that work. Airplanes and elevators are computing devices too, after all." Funny you should say that. Yesterday, the buttons for our elevators crashed. Nobody could hail elevators on the touch-screen thing. Because software. Name the last time an actual elevator crashed.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Name the last time an actual elevator crashed. They do it like every day, if, as is the case for software, you use “crash” to mean “experience a sudden and complete cessation of operation.” They also do crash in the rather more extreme physical sense occasionally, e.g., https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/3-injured-in-elevator-crash/article24028343.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/3-injured-in-elev...
  - irundebian 8y ago
    In countries with lack of proper regulations elevators are crashing more often, that's what I would expect. But I don't think elevators crash as often as software in India.
  - joveian 8y ago
    There was an incident with someone using an elevator here in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago, IIRC not a sudden stop at the end at least but too rapid movement leading to an actual heart attack. It is rare in the US for elevator users to be harmed but not that rare for maintinance workers to be harmed; it is actually a fairly dangerous profession. IMO, it is actively harmful to blame the software industry as a whole for voting machines being horrible since however bad most software is there are parts of the industry that can produce software as reliable as bridges and elevators and those are the parts of the industry that should be used for voting machines even if the rest of the industry was quite a bit better. It is only for political reasons that voting machines are unreliable.
- sacado2 8y ago
  It happened 2 months ago, here in France. A kid died in the accident, and it was not a software problem. And there are tons of elevators out of order, on a daily basis, and more often for mechanical reasons than for software reasons (now obviously, the software part of an elevator is less complex than its mechanical part, but still).
  - timr 8y ago
    I love how the bar gets lowered as people struggle to make software look reasonable. "Elevators out of order" is not "elevators crashing". Of course mechanical systems wear out and have to be repaired. Elevators, bridges, airliners and other properly engineered systems, are incredibly safe and reliable. You have to go digging to find exceptional events that remotely compare to the daily chaos found in software systems. The point of my story is that elevators themselves (systems we barely think about on a daily basis) start to become chaotic and unreliable when software is introduced. ...which is not to say that it can't be fixed. My contention is that software engineering is possible, it just isn't fun or easy for inexperienced coders to do, and therefore not valued by the current software industry.
    - sacado2 8y ago
      You were mentioning elevators crashing in the first place. But anyway elevators are quite frequently out of order, and I don't know how often it's a software vs mechanical vs administrative (ie "security check") problem. I just know that, in all instances of elevator crashes I know of, the problem was a mechanical one, not a software one. > ...which is not to say that it can't be fixed. My contention is that software engineering is possible, it just isn't fun or easy for inexperienced coders to do, and therefore not valued by the current software industry. It's not that it's not fun, but it's incredibly expensive, and usually not worth the cost.

lev99 8y ago

> It's a rare case of a system its main customer does want to be able to break. Many people would be happy to break ATMs or banking software.

Arubis 8y ago
And indeed, they're happy to do just that. https://www.wired.com/2016/05/insane-81m-bangladesh-bank-heist-heres-know/ https://www.wired.com/2016/05/insane-81m-bangladesh-bank-hei...
sacado2 8y ago
The main customer of an ATM is the bank owning it. Not sure if "customer" is the correct word, let's say "owner", as opposed to "end user".

timr 8y ago

"Now, of course we can make things that work. Airplanes and elevators are computing devices too, after all." Funny you should say that. Yesterday, the buttons for our elevators crashed. Nobody could hail elevators on the touch-screen thing. Because software. Name the last time an actual elevator crashed.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Name the last time an actual elevator crashed. They do it like every day, if, as is the case for software, you use “crash” to mean “experience a sudden and complete cessation of operation.” They also do crash in the rather more extreme physical sense occasionally, e.g., https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/3-injured-in-elevator-crash/article24028343.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/3-injured-in-elev...
- irundebian 8y ago
  In countries with lack of proper regulations elevators are crashing more often, that's what I would expect. But I don't think elevators crash as often as software in India.
- joveian 8y ago
  There was an incident with someone using an elevator here in Portland, Oregon, a few years ago, IIRC not a sudden stop at the end at least but too rapid movement leading to an actual heart attack. It is rare in the US for elevator users to be harmed but not that rare for maintinance workers to be harmed; it is actually a fairly dangerous profession. IMO, it is actively harmful to blame the software industry as a whole for voting machines being horrible since however bad most software is there are parts of the industry that can produce software as reliable as bridges and elevators and those are the parts of the industry that should be used for voting machines even if the rest of the industry was quite a bit better. It is only for political reasons that voting machines are unreliable.
sacado2 8y ago
It happened 2 months ago, here in France. A kid died in the accident, and it was not a software problem. And there are tons of elevators out of order, on a daily basis, and more often for mechanical reasons than for software reasons (now obviously, the software part of an elevator is less complex than its mechanical part, but still).
- timr 8y ago
  I love how the bar gets lowered as people struggle to make software look reasonable. "Elevators out of order" is not "elevators crashing". Of course mechanical systems wear out and have to be repaired. Elevators, bridges, airliners and other properly engineered systems, are incredibly safe and reliable. You have to go digging to find exceptional events that remotely compare to the daily chaos found in software systems. The point of my story is that elevators themselves (systems we barely think about on a daily basis) start to become chaotic and unreliable when software is introduced. ...which is not to say that it can't be fixed. My contention is that software engineering is possible, it just isn't fun or easy for inexperienced coders to do, and therefore not valued by the current software industry.
  - sacado2 8y ago
    You were mentioning elevators crashing in the first place. But anyway elevators are quite frequently out of order, and I don't know how often it's a software vs mechanical vs administrative (ie "security check") problem. I just know that, in all instances of elevator crashes I know of, the problem was a mechanical one, not a software one. > ...which is not to say that it can't be fixed. My contention is that software engineering is possible, it just isn't fun or easy for inexperienced coders to do, and therefore not valued by the current software industry. It's not that it's not fun, but it's incredibly expensive, and usually not worth the cost.