The software for the space shuttle flight computers is produced using an incredibly disciplined process. Here's a very idealistic article about it http://www.fa

The software for the space shuttle flight computers is produced using an incredibly disciplined process. Here's a very idealistic article about it http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/06/writestuff.html The downside is that every change is prohibitively expensive. I didn't bookmark the article but remember to have read that the astronauts are taught lots of rules like "if the computer displays x and y, this means that z", stuff that would usually be a simple software feature. The new year bug seems to be quite similar.