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> it's that (in theory) the sheer volume of man-hours spent pouring over every minute detail of them, incorporating lessons learned from every failure that's ev

> it's that (in theory) the sheer volume of man-hours spent pouring over every minute detail of them, incorporating lessons learned from every failure that's ever happened in the field, amount to a very very high success rate and this is what company executives need to understand. Given the fleeting nature of software and the speed in which one can write working code (not strictly correct or bug-free, but something that apparently works) people are convinced that software development should be cheap -- or cheaper than say airplane design. Software design is thus seen as cost not investment and those flaws in specifying and writing correct core is then shown in not treated edge cases, sometimes catastrofically

_bxg1 7y ago
The problem isn't that executives don't understand, it's that they don't care. Capitalism's incentives do not encourage the practice that's best for society. The only industries where care is taken are the ones that have been regulated to be as such. And then there are cases like Boeing, where that regulatory structure decayed and the safety practices decayed in tandem.
- Vector919 7y ago
  This reminds me of one of the first conversations I had with my manager when I started my current job as a software engineer. I used to work at a large financial company who had an intensely rigorous approach to verifying it's software in both manual and automated ways, as well as a much more careful approach to writing code to begin with. When I started here (a much smaller startup delivering marketing software for small business clients), I brought up that I was concerned about going to somewhere with a less comprehensive testing pipeline in place, to which I was told: "It's not particularly important to be able to find bugs before they're released, it's more important to optimize the deployment speed so that we can release the fixes quickly" Sounded crazy to me at the time, but I later realized it's really all about what your industry is optimizing for, and what would cost you more money.
  - gchamonlive 7y ago
    > it's really all about what your industry is optimizing for, and what would cost you more money Sure, those were not critical systems, they could be patched with minimal hasse to clients. However you can't really predict catastrophe costs. It could range from minor usability issues to hard to trace calculation errors that could jeopardise the whole production operation. If the company doesn't work work with prototypes it should invest heavily in test coverage, integration test and delivery pipelines

_bxg1 7y ago

The problem isn't that executives don't understand, it's that they don't care. Capitalism's incentives do not encourage the practice that's best for society. The only industries where care is taken are the ones that have been regulated to be as such. And then there are cases like Boeing, where that regulatory structure decayed and the safety practices decayed in tandem.

Vector919 7y ago
This reminds me of one of the first conversations I had with my manager when I started my current job as a software engineer. I used to work at a large financial company who had an intensely rigorous approach to verifying it's software in both manual and automated ways, as well as a much more careful approach to writing code to begin with. When I started here (a much smaller startup delivering marketing software for small business clients), I brought up that I was concerned about going to somewhere with a less comprehensive testing pipeline in place, to which I was told: "It's not particularly important to be able to find bugs before they're released, it's more important to optimize the deployment speed so that we can release the fixes quickly" Sounded crazy to me at the time, but I later realized it's really all about what your industry is optimizing for, and what would cost you more money.
- gchamonlive 7y ago
  > it's really all about what your industry is optimizing for, and what would cost you more money Sure, those were not critical systems, they could be patched with minimal hasse to clients. However you can't really predict catastrophe costs. It could range from minor usability issues to hard to trace calculation errors that could jeopardise the whole production operation. If the company doesn't work work with prototypes it should invest heavily in test coverage, integration test and delivery pipelines