3 ms·
Software does not wear out like most physical components, but they often cause failure in interaction/coordinating between subsystems. As the amount of coordin
by bumby 3y ago
Software does not wear out like most physical components, but they often cause failure in interaction/coordinating between subsystems.
As the amount of coordination increases, the number of failure modes tends to grow quite fast. That's why software failures in physical, safety-critical systems are not trivially corrected. There are a lot of second order effects that need to be considered.
- Qem 3y ago> Software does not wear out like most physical components. It fails like buildings near fault lines, because the ground moves under them. Think broken dependencies, operating system obsolescence, et cetera.
- bumby 3y agoI like this analogy. Although your example focused on software-centric coordination, I think it's important to also extend it to non-software systems. An apropos and famous example is the Ariane 5 rocket mishap. The same validated software from the Ariane 4 was used, but the hardware design changed. Specifically, the velocity of the Ariane 5 exceeded that of its predecessor and exceeded the 16-bit variable used.