3 ms·
Well, that's a relief.
by hetspookjee 7y ago
Well, that's a relief.
- platz 7y agoSo if that software fix relieves you, wouldnt you have to admit that it was the software the was the most direct reason for the crashes? HN folks here seem hesitant to say this. But without the dumb ability to do repeated activations it would've been a much less severe problem.
- hu3 7y agoThe software did exactly what it was told to do. The error was in the specification.
- platz 7y agoHah, wow
- thombat 7y agoLet's suppose that the entire control logic for MCAS was now re-implemented with vacuum tubes. Would you now argue that the aircraft crashes indicate a hardware problem? Or would you agree that the real problem is in the system design, since any conforming implementation of it will produce the jeopardy?
- platz 7y agoIf it was implemented with vacuum tubes, that would indicate a hardware problem as well as a system design problem. So in this situation, the claim is that braindead contractors mechanically implemented something to spec by force of law? Sure, then whoever designed the logic is accountable. In 99.9% other environments, the distinction is collapsed because the implementor typically has responsibility to design sub-component level logic correctly, to high-level requirements, but also to overall business need and in service to even higher level project goals, and the team that designed the logic is also implemented by the same team.
- bdavis__ 7y agonope, all of the vacum tubes would be working as designed. not a hardware problem, a system design problem. thus the invention of a discipline called 'systems engineering'.. i would say in 100% of engineering development, the design is done as a system, and specific requirements are allocated to design elements (like MCAS software). Each of these elements is tested against the requirements. aeronautical engineering is a very specific skill. so is aircraft controls. so is airworthiness. a software engineer is an expert in software, not these other disciplines.
- platz 7y agoAt the level of specification you've laid out here, the act of 'software development' is reduced to almost nothing, and you have re-categorized the entire effort as systems engineering.
- zaroth 7y agoHaving a specification for how a system should behave in response to various input signals is not at all the same as actually having the functioning software for achieving that system. In fact, achieving a functional and fully correct piece of software based on such a specification is not at all a trivial task, as experienced software engineers will well appreciate. Because while the specification may describe a certain sequence of inputs that should result in a certain sequence of outputs, it probably does not prescribe the exact data structures, memory layout, logic flow, and computational steps required to guarantee the correct output is always produced from a given set of inputs. And the people being paid to create the necessary data structures, algorithms, calculations and control logic in order to implement the design specification... those developers are specifically not in a position to make systems design engineering changes to the underlying specification itself.
- bdavis__ 7y agowell stated.
- 7y ago