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I don't think deregulation, mergers or accountants killed the Max or its passengers. I think it was an engineering culture in love with the simplicity of an id
by mattrp 7y ago
I don't think deregulation, mergers or accountants killed the Max or its passengers. I think it was an engineering culture in love with the simplicity of an idea that on the face of it was genius. What made the Max work was the idea that you could use software - something Boeing in its military work already was very good at - to create essentially a new plane without all the rigors and costs of creating a new plane. This vision allowed Boeing to believe in its own BS that rather than have a collection of static designs incapable of evolution, it had a platform. The concept of the platform was the differentiator that Airbus had that Boeing did not have until it marketed the Max. Through software, the 737 became a way to create the illusion of a platform that could serve most if not all markets (wide body being the obvious exception). Once Boeing was in love with this idea, it never put it back through the rigors needed because to do so would have been to admit that the 737 wasn't a platform and that they were in fact building a new plane. I won't find it surprising that in a forum (HN) visited by engineers this comment doesn't receive the mother of all downvotes. However, I think if you're looking at Boeing honestly and not clouding your views with a whole bunch of economist-mumbo-jumbo about deregulation, you'll see that Boeing is just a leading indicator for what's about to happen in a lot of industries if it isn't already. My view, stop loving the elegance of your engineering and start thinking about the lives you actually impact. <-- That -- is what was lost.
- bjornsing 7y agoMCAS was “elegant”...? Where did you get your engineering degree?
- temac 7y agoI've got a huge issue with all the stories about the "software" being supposedly at fault. The problem was never about the software per se; it was about the avionic specs on system level. You can do very complex things without even involving software - including non linear things - or by involving it but not necessarily in a primary characterizing way. What happened here was in no way a software failure except if you generalize the meaning of "software" to include the whole lifecycle of the domain it's applied to, and the comprehensive corresponding engineering. And that's what tons of "purely" software people (by that I mean people working in a field where the non-software components are only ancillary to making the software run, in huge contrast with what happens in avionics) are doing too often in that case. Except what failed here was good old boring engineering, risk analysis, and properly conforming to regulations. The software "worked", in the sense that it did precisely what it was designed to do. But what it was designed to do was stupid. And deciding what it should do was not a "software" thing. It was an avionics one. It is not possible to conflate the tech and the domain in this area, in contrast with what you can do for e.g. some websites or some smartphone apps. There was software involved, but it is not more interesting in this case than noting that there was electronics involved. And it could also have been done through a mainly mechanical apparatus, but the only reason it did not is that software is more convenient. But that's an implementation detail that played very little role in the tragedy (unless Boeing is waaaay more fucked up than we are even all discussing about, but I actually don't expect that).
- mattrp 7y ago> But what it was designed to do was stupid You mean like making unflyable planes flyable as software does for the f16 and a host of other military aircraft?
- bjornsing 7y agoAnother example is the Swedish fighter jet Gripen. So sure, it’s doable, but not as a quick hack (“if the single angle-of-attack sensor goes above X degrees force the nose down by changing stabilizer angle”). Any engineer worth his salt should be able to tell the difference.