3 ms·

When your design is a mess you're probably better off to scrap it altogether and start from a clean piece of paper. "Fixes" to a bad design are adding to the me

When your design is a mess you're probably better off to scrap it altogether and start from a clean piece of paper. "Fixes" to a bad design are adding to the mess. And in this case the mess has already cost hundreds of lives. You cannot "patch" this...

DanHulton 7y ago
I see this sentiment a lot, but its kind of surprising. Traditional wisdom states the opposite - never do a full rewrite, you lose the years of buit-up fixes and edge cases and have to learn from scratch in too many places. Despite everything, I still don't think the solution to the 737 MAX problem is to start over. The base problem that Boeing has its actually their terrible engineering culture, the one that values shortcuts and profit over thoroughness and safety. Even if they started from a blank piece of paper, they'd have that engineering culture problem (and to be fair, it is far more likely an engineering management culture problem), and they'd still turn out a design that kills people.
- acqq 7y ago
  The problem here is that what Boeing is selling ("737 that spends significantly less fuel and doesn't need recertification") simply can't be made safe. Whatever results from the marketing driven goal (selling something that doesn't and can't exist in reality) will remain unsafe as long as all the "already sold features" are preserved. So it's not if they should "start from clean" but just accept the need for the new certification and then do the changes that are really needed. It will be less profitable for Boeing but it righly should be this time! They are killing people otherwise.
  - selectodude 7y ago
    The funny thing is this plane already exists. It’s called the 757 and Boeing stopped making it 15 years ago because the airlines wanted stretched 737s far more than they wanted the clean sheet redesign.

3 ms·

When your design is a mess you're probably better off to scrap it altogether and start from a clean piece of paper. "Fixes" to a bad design are adding to the me

by zerogvt 7y ago

DanHulton 7y ago
I see this sentiment a lot, but its kind of surprising. Traditional wisdom states the opposite - never do a full rewrite, you lose the years of buit-up fixes and edge cases and have to learn from scratch in too many places. Despite everything, I still don't think the solution to the 737 MAX problem is to start over. The base problem that Boeing has its actually their terrible engineering culture, the one that values shortcuts and profit over thoroughness and safety. Even if they started from a blank piece of paper, they'd have that engineering culture problem (and to be fair, it is far more likely an engineering management culture problem), and they'd still turn out a design that kills people.
- acqq 7y ago
  The problem here is that what Boeing is selling ("737 that spends significantly less fuel and doesn't need recertification") simply can't be made safe. Whatever results from the marketing driven goal (selling something that doesn't and can't exist in reality) will remain unsafe as long as all the "already sold features" are preserved. So it's not if they should "start from clean" but just accept the need for the new certification and then do the changes that are really needed. It will be less profitable for Boeing but it righly should be this time! They are killing people otherwise.
  - selectodude 7y ago
    The funny thing is this plane already exists. It’s called the 757 and Boeing stopped making it 15 years ago because the airlines wanted stretched 737s far more than they wanted the clean sheet redesign.