3 ms·

> What blew me away is the idea that there can be a bug in something that is used literally everywhere all the time. We've become so accustomed to computers be

> What blew me away is the idea that there can be a bug in something that is used literally everywhere all the time. We've become so accustomed to computers being generally unreliable that I guess people see something weird and just reboot. We checksum, run reductant servers, and just generally tolerate and work around way more failures and weirdness than we should. It's funny because we're theoretically an industry that could be full of maths and proofs but ask anybody outside of it and you'll get "yeah computers just don't work sometimes I guess that's how it is"

ratorx 4y ago
The problem is that even a perfectly implemented computer will fail randomly, due to inherent unreliability in the underlying hardware (cosmic rays, bad silicon etc.). And once you start designing around that unreliability, it is harder to justify chasing esoteric bugs rather than folding that alongside the probability model of random hardware failure. It’s hard for any system dealing with the real world to be completely “maths and proofs”. There is plenty of it that’s applied even in the real world systems we operate today. At the end of the day, it’s Engineering and not a pure science. And I guess the other problem is that quite often you don’t need to quantify the failure modes and do “proper engineering”, because a lot of the systems we build and use just don’t need the level of reliability that e.g. a bridge needs (yet). There are definitely industries where software reliability is considered paramount, but that’s not the majority of the market.
- ketralnis 4y ago
  > a lot of the systems we build and use just don’t need the level of reliability that e.g. a bridge needs Sure. As the saying goes, "Anybody can build a bridge that never falls down. But it takes an engineer to build a bridge that _almost_ doesn't fall down" (referring to being able to build it in a cost-conscious way). There's a spectrum there for sure, but as an industry we're on the other side of it from where I personally wish we were. We should be embarrassed that "it must have been a computer glitch" can be used to explain away nearly any problem. Because it's usually right, and it's usually our fault rather than the cosmic rays.

ratorx 4y ago

The problem is that even a perfectly implemented computer will fail randomly, due to inherent unreliability in the underlying hardware (cosmic rays, bad silicon etc.). And once you start designing around that unreliability, it is harder to justify chasing esoteric bugs rather than folding that alongside the probability model of random hardware failure. It’s hard for any system dealing with the real world to be completely “maths and proofs”. There is plenty of it that’s applied even in the real world systems we operate today. At the end of the day, it’s Engineering and not a pure science. And I guess the other problem is that quite often you don’t need to quantify the failure modes and do “proper engineering”, because a lot of the systems we build and use just don’t need the level of reliability that e.g. a bridge needs (yet). There are definitely industries where software reliability is considered paramount, but that’s not the majority of the market.

ketralnis 4y ago
> a lot of the systems we build and use just don’t need the level of reliability that e.g. a bridge needs Sure. As the saying goes, "Anybody can build a bridge that never falls down. But it takes an engineer to build a bridge that _almost_ doesn't fall down" (referring to being able to build it in a cost-conscious way). There's a spectrum there for sure, but as an industry we're on the other side of it from where I personally wish we were. We should be embarrassed that "it must have been a computer glitch" can be used to explain away nearly any problem. Because it's usually right, and it's usually our fault rather than the cosmic rays.