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Likely, the reason the 737max story receives so much attention is because software devs (consciously or not) feel this could affect our industry. There may eve

by platz 8y ago

Likely, the reason the 737max story receives so much attention is because software devs (consciously or not) feel this could affect our industry. There may even be some guilt involved (justified or not), if it involves software in any meaningful way. Various community members have been warning for some time that we'll face regulation sooner or later; all that needs to happen is a sufficiently large disaster. The dependence between life-critical hardware and software will only increase in scale. Whether or not this begins our "Iron Ring" moment, I think it's something devs implicitly feel, and is culturally resonant for them. --- > my brother in law @davekammeyer, who’s a pilot, software engineer & deep thinker. > I'm a software engineer The thread does feel a little defensive, no? I'm not saying that software was the cause, or even the main cause; though even if the other causes appear to be the precipicating factors, we should be on the watch out for defensiveness, without knowing the _whole story_ * I don't care that in this case, the software was not to blame - that is not the main point i am making.

sbarre 8y ago
I wouldn't say defensive, but rather informative. The main point of that thread is not actually to "solve the mystery" of the crash, or even to point fingers at where the fault lies. The point I took away from the thread is to show that these issues are complex, and there is never one single thing you can point to as "the problem". In most cases, it is really a series of interconnected events. Our media (and I think many of us - so I'm not singling them out) loves to simplify problems in an effort to make them understandable by the average person, and while that may be necessary for them to get people to pay attention, it does us all a disservice in the long-term I think.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mcguire 8y ago
  ...as long as you aren't pointing at the software engineer, whose products did exactly what they were supposed to do.
  - platz 8y ago
    Ah yes.. the code meets the requirements. It follows the spec. No further involvement necessary. And if Boeing does release a 'software upgrade', what is there to say about why the software wasn't required to be that way in the first place?
Dahoon 8y ago
>Various community members have been warning for some time that we'll face regulation sooner or later; all that needs to happen is a sufficiently large disaster. I'm reading that line as if it is a bad thing. I don't see why and couldn't disagree more. Software failures should be handled just the same as in hardware or harsher as you can much easier and faster update software. Bad enough bugs should be handled like they are in hardware, IE. cars that are pulled of the marked if they pollute too much, planes that are grounded, etc. Throwing your hands in the air saying "we don't support version X" shouldn't be an excuse. If a car have a 3 year warranty and they start going full throttle killing people or you can exploit a jeep to disable its brakes the manufactures should be just as liable as if it happened on day one or year 10 and with no difference if the error is hard or software. If IoT and router device manufactures should pay the damages their unpatched devices cause, they would be fixed, unlike now where even my consumer-grade managed Cisco switch had had exactly zero firmware patches since I bought it.
- platz 8y ago
  Your points precisely match the various community members i alluded to, calling for best practices and safety. _I_ wasn't implying that regulation was was a bad thing, but I do think that the industry, or at the very least, established entities in tech, fear it.

by platz 8y ago

sbarre 8y ago

I wouldn't say defensive, but rather informative. The main point of that thread is not actually to "solve the mystery" of the crash, or even to point fingers at where the fault lies. The point I took away from the thread is to show that these issues are complex, and there is never one single thing you can point to as "the problem". In most cases, it is really a series of interconnected events. Our media (and I think many of us - so I'm not singling them out) loves to simplify problems in an effort to make them understandable by the average person, and while that may be necessary for them to get people to pay attention, it does us all a disservice in the long-term I think.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mcguire 8y ago
...as long as you aren't pointing at the software engineer, whose products did exactly what they were supposed to do.
- platz 8y ago
  Ah yes.. the code meets the requirements. It follows the spec. No further involvement necessary. And if Boeing does release a 'software upgrade', what is there to say about why the software wasn't required to be that way in the first place?

Dahoon 8y ago

>Various community members have been warning for some time that we'll face regulation sooner or later; all that needs to happen is a sufficiently large disaster. I'm reading that line as if it is a bad thing. I don't see why and couldn't disagree more. Software failures should be handled just the same as in hardware or harsher as you can much easier and faster update software. Bad enough bugs should be handled like they are in hardware, IE. cars that are pulled of the marked if they pollute too much, planes that are grounded, etc. Throwing your hands in the air saying "we don't support version X" shouldn't be an excuse. If a car have a 3 year warranty and they start going full throttle killing people or you can exploit a jeep to disable its brakes the manufactures should be just as liable as if it happened on day one or year 10 and with no difference if the error is hard or software. If IoT and router device manufactures should pay the damages their unpatched devices cause, they would be fixed, unlike now where even my consumer-grade managed Cisco switch had had exactly zero firmware patches since I bought it.

platz 8y ago
Your points precisely match the various community members i alluded to, calling for best practices and safety. _I_ wasn't implying that regulation was was a bad thing, but I do think that the industry, or at the very least, established entities in tech, fear it.