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I sleep very well at night knowing my software is not keeping helicopters in the air, cars on the road, etc. Honestly I'm in awe of the lot of programmers who

I sleep very well at night knowing my software is not keeping helicopters in the air, cars on the road, etc. Honestly I'm in awe of the lot of programmers who take these kinds of tasks on. I don't know how they can relax at all relative to their work.

Ocerge 8y ago
I'm with you, I'm nowhere near confident enough in myself to work directly on safety-critical systems. I imagine an important part of those organizations is removing SPOFs with respect to the engineering team itself; i.e. nobody fails alone, and everybody tests the hell out of everything. Could be wrong though.
ianhowson 8y ago
If you as an individual are taking on that level of personal responsibility, your organization is broken. Part of the regulatory process is to demonstrate sufficient levels of resilience in both the systems produced and the development process used to produce them. It should be a really boring process with a lot of crosschecks. You should be sleeping well knowing that your work is being reviewed and tested and attacked by other people. (Reality is often different, of course. Just don't try to be the hero.)
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
> I don't know how they can relax at all relative to their work. They strictly follow procedures. If faulty code gets through to production and somehow causes a fatality, it's a failure of the procedures, not the individual developer. This works so well in aviation and yet seems completely non-existent in the automotive world.
- ianhowson 8y ago
  The procedures exist and are 'followed', but there's a lot more time-to-market pressure. Manufacturing lines dictate the schedule and software must keep up no matter what.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
    When I worked on safety-critical products, it was actually really nice to be able to push back. "We can't satisfy the safety case yet" is all you need to say to get your manager to cave. If they want to take the risk upon themselves to sign off on a known-unsafe (technically; in practice it was already pretty good, just not good enough yet) device, and go to jail if something goes sideways, they can be my guest... In practice, they preferred to come back next week and ask if we were done yet. The project went wayyyy past the deadline, thanks for asking :-)
yoklov 8y ago
> I sleep very well at night knowing my software is not keeping helicopters in the air, cars on the road, etc. Hopefully at least, but you never know where those random shell scripts you put in a gist (or whatever) might end up.
nradov 8y ago
I recommend reading the "NASA Manager's Handbook for Software Development". It contains some great guidelines for writing safety-critical software. AFAIK, no Space Shuttle mission ever suffered a serious safety incident due to a software defect. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19910006460 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19910006460
sitkack 8y ago
If you work for AirBnb your bad software is definitely changing lives and putting people in danger. Software doesn't have to be embedded to materially affect someone's life.

Ocerge 8y ago

I'm with you, I'm nowhere near confident enough in myself to work directly on safety-critical systems. I imagine an important part of those organizations is removing SPOFs with respect to the engineering team itself; i.e. nobody fails alone, and everybody tests the hell out of everything. Could be wrong though.

ianhowson 8y ago

If you as an individual are taking on that level of personal responsibility, your organization is broken. Part of the regulatory process is to demonstrate sufficient levels of resilience in both the systems produced and the development process used to produce them. It should be a really boring process with a lot of crosschecks. You should be sleeping well knowing that your work is being reviewed and tested and attacked by other people. (Reality is often different, of course. Just don't try to be the hero.)

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

> I don't know how they can relax at all relative to their work. They strictly follow procedures. If faulty code gets through to production and somehow causes a fatality, it's a failure of the procedures, not the individual developer. This works so well in aviation and yet seems completely non-existent in the automotive world.

ianhowson 8y ago
The procedures exist and are 'followed', but there's a lot more time-to-market pressure. Manufacturing lines dictate the schedule and software must keep up no matter what.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  When I worked on safety-critical products, it was actually really nice to be able to push back. "We can't satisfy the safety case yet" is all you need to say to get your manager to cave. If they want to take the risk upon themselves to sign off on a known-unsafe (technically; in practice it was already pretty good, just not good enough yet) device, and go to jail if something goes sideways, they can be my guest... In practice, they preferred to come back next week and ask if we were done yet. The project went wayyyy past the deadline, thanks for asking :-)

yoklov 8y ago

> I sleep very well at night knowing my software is not keeping helicopters in the air, cars on the road, etc. Hopefully at least, but you never know where those random shell scripts you put in a gist (or whatever) might end up.

nradov 8y ago

I recommend reading the "NASA Manager's Handbook for Software Development". It contains some great guidelines for writing safety-critical software. AFAIK, no Space Shuttle mission ever suffered a serious safety incident due to a software defect. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19910006460 https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19910006460

sitkack 8y ago

If you work for AirBnb your bad software is definitely changing lives and putting people in danger. Software doesn't have to be embedded to materially affect someone's life.