> But this is because I was able to apply well-understood and rigorously accepted simplifying assumptions that were conservative (from the point of view of a fa

> But this is because I was able to apply well-understood and rigorously accepted simplifying assumptions that were conservative (from the point of view of a factor of safety), and fully encapsulated all the understanding I needed to produce a part fit for use. I am not sure how this is different from evaluating a library, database technology, or architecture, going through design review, learning properties of distributed systems (which have corresponding proofs by the way) to understand which properties you need to satisfy with a given solution, reading the documentation, viewing other open-source code that uses the technology, reading publications/testimonials from people and companies using it in productions, etc., etc., like we do. In particular "applying simplifying assumptions" - this is what we all have to do particularly in a distributed, cloud-computing world where you are essentially purchasing a conceptual primitive (like "virtual CPU" or "replicated block storage" and building on top of simplifying assumptions about how those work, because you can't walk up to the NAS rack and start hitting it with a hammer to see if the data can be recovered after, the same way you can't hit a steel beam with an actual hurricane to know what will happen. Although if I worked in the datacenter operations team for a cloud provider, I would absolutely hope to one day be able to test how we handle if I yank some plugs or hit the NAS rack with a hammer :)