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"Various hacks (as we would call them in the software industry) were developed." Dear God. That's a sentence I never, ever wanted to hear about an aircraft.
by _bxg1 8y ago
"Various hacks (as we would call them in the software industry) were developed."
Dear God. That's a sentence I never, ever wanted to hear about an aircraft.
- nutjob2 8y agoThe modern 737 is a collection of hardware and software hacks, flying in close formation.
- cmauniada 8y agocloud formation* Sorry, I couldn't resist.
- penagwin 8y ago> flying in close formation "conveniently in close proximity most of the time, usually". I wonder what the equivalent of "Developing in Production" looks like for planes, or if this is it?
- WalterBright 8y agoSo is any airplane that was ever built that is capable of flying.
- WalterBright 8y agoAll engineering designs are full of compromises (the article uses "hacks" meaning compromises), as there are a large number of competing issues at work. Pretty much none of those issues are ever aligned along the same axis. For just a taste of this, an airliner flies at high altitude, and at low altitude. It flies at low speeds, and high speeds. It flies heavily loaded and empty. Optimizing for any one of these regimes means unacceptable behavior on the others. So compromises are necessary. Ever notice the flaps on the wings? They're a compromise (a "hack" if you will) to change the shape of the wing to make it work better across different flight regimes. Because metal isn't very flexible, and a long list of other issues with the machinery that operates the flaps, the shape of them is hardly anything but compromises.
- _bxg1 8y agoI don't even work on life-or-death machinery, only JavaScript UI's, but if a higher-up requested a new feature from me that would require multiple cascading changes just to keep other things from breaking, I would fight tooth and nail to talk them out of it. The compromises you're talking about are fundamentally unavoidable ones that come directly from the constraints at hand. A hack is something that degrades the integrity of the overall system for the sake of a short-term feature. Hacks are the payday loans of technical debt.
- WalterBright 8y agoThey're the same thing. BTW, many aircraft crashes were due to a pilot doing what would have been the right thing on another design they were familiar with. Boeing's plan to make the MAX behave like other airplanes is a reasonable plan to improve safety. The "multiple cascading changes" is always an issue with a complex design, and in fact Boeing's approach with the Max was choosing a route which minimized those cascading changes.
- mcny 8y ago» They're the same thing. BTW, many aircraft crashes were due to a pilot doing what would have been the right thing on another design they were familiar with. Boeing's plan to make the MAX behave like other airplanes is a reasonable plan to improve safety. » The "multiple cascading changes" is always an issue with a complex design, and in fact Boeing's approach with the Max was choosing a route which minimized those cascading changes. I think the charges people are bringing is that Boeing wanted to make the new airplane acceptable by airliners by making the 737 Max the same as the old plane so there was no need to certify pilots for the new plane. My vote is that this is criminal negligence at best and under an ideal government, the then CEO and board would be in jail pending charges right now.
- WalterBright 8y agoYou wouldn't have any planes (trains or automobiles) under such a standard. Keep in mind that horses killed far more people per mile than planes, trains or automobiles ever did.