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I find it interesting how often the Therac 25 is mentioned on HN (thanks to Dan for the list), but nobody ever mentions that those kind of problems never entire

I find it interesting how often the Therac 25 is mentioned on HN (thanks to Dan for the list), but nobody ever mentions that those kind of problems never entirely went away. Therac 25 is just the famous one. You don't have to go back to 1986, there are definitely examples from this century. The root causes are somewhat different, and somewhat the same. But no one seems to be teaching these more modern cases to aspiring programmers in school, at least not to the level where every programmer I know has heard of them. For example, the issue which caused this in 2007: https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20100124/News/605200351/SH https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20100124/News/60520... Or the process issues which caused this in 2001: https://www.fda.gov/radiation-emitting-products/alerts-and-notices/fda-statement-radiation-overexposures-panama https://www.fda.gov/radiation-emitting-products/alerts-and-n...

sebmellen 6y ago
I quote this from the article so people may take an interest in reading it. This is the opening paragraph: > As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose -- which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe -- be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare.
Shivetya 6y ago
To this day I run into development managers who will dismiss an easily replicated issue on the grounds it won't happen enough, though of course with a big group of users it actually does, to warrant fixing. While this can be true at times and one excuse is always, we have support to fix the data, it tends to a standard by which all fixes are handled. which is, once you start blowing off testing, having exceptions to avoid every fix, you rarely if ever leave that mode and end up with a stressed support staff and users in the field who think your coders are incompetent.
ahepp 6y ago
The original NYT article for the 2007 incident has more details about the problematic software: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html
Leherenn 6y ago
There's a duality to this that often makes me wonder. It seems like a huge issue, but at the same time, the examples everyone hear about are 20+ years old. I would have thought that, with the explosion of digital systems, they should happen regularly, and yet we do not hear of them. I mean, your "unknown" examples are from 20 and 14 year ago. Are we actually not as bad at mitigating risks when needed as the rest of the industry would led us to believe, or are those incidents just not covered?
Hackbraten 6y ago
Snapshot for EU residents, who are blocked from reading the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210215234240/https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20100124/News/605200351/SH https://web.archive.org/web/20210215234240/https://www.heral...

sebmellen 6y ago

I quote this from the article so people may take an interest in reading it. This is the opening paragraph: > As Scott Jerome-Parks lay dying, he clung to this wish: that his fatal radiation overdose -- which left him deaf, struggling to see, unable to swallow, burned, with his teeth falling out, with ulcers in his mouth and throat, nauseated, in severe pain and finally unable to breathe -- be studied and talked about publicly so that others might not have to live his nightmare.

Shivetya 6y ago

To this day I run into development managers who will dismiss an easily replicated issue on the grounds it won't happen enough, though of course with a big group of users it actually does, to warrant fixing. While this can be true at times and one excuse is always, we have support to fix the data, it tends to a standard by which all fixes are handled. which is, once you start blowing off testing, having exceptions to avoid every fix, you rarely if ever leave that mode and end up with a stressed support staff and users in the field who think your coders are incompetent.

ahepp 6y ago

The original NYT article for the 2007 incident has more details about the problematic software: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html

Leherenn 6y ago

There's a duality to this that often makes me wonder. It seems like a huge issue, but at the same time, the examples everyone hear about are 20+ years old. I would have thought that, with the explosion of digital systems, they should happen regularly, and yet we do not hear of them. I mean, your "unknown" examples are from 20 and 14 year ago. Are we actually not as bad at mitigating risks when needed as the rest of the industry would led us to believe, or are those incidents just not covered?

Hackbraten 6y ago

Snapshot for EU residents, who are blocked from reading the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210215234240/https://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20100124/News/605200351/SH https://web.archive.org/web/20210215234240/https://www.heral...