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It's interesting to see the negative reactions to this while an awful lot of us are employed specifically and payed exorbitantly because computers regularly are

It's interesting to see the negative reactions to this while an awful lot of us are employed specifically and payed exorbitantly because computers regularly are not operating correctly in weird subtle ways that are hard to figure out. Especially as society leans into ML models to solve computationally hard problems, the legal notion that the computer is "correct" by default absolutely needs to go out the window.

ygjb 3y ago
We are paid exorbitantly to work hard to maintain the illusion that the computers are operating correctly. Any reasonably competent software developer or engineer should know that just because the customer dashboard is green and everything is working as expected doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute dumpster fire raging in the background (at least, having worked in tech for 20 years across many different verticals, that has been my experience).
- jack_riminton 3y ago
  Exactly, and edge cases can almost never be fully ruled out with sufficiently complex systems
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    And that's even with things operating to some semblance of regularity and conformance to some established baseline. Not even covering the "kick it down the road" issues that sometimes (and sometimes don't) evolve into "features that aren't bugs" that have workarounds on workarounds on workarounds that will eventually have their own bugs. The stuff we know we shouldn't do / that isn't good, but that happens anyway. I subscribe to the philosophy that computers cannot be held accountable, because they're only operating as intended, or at least as implemented. CentOS used to bill itself as a "bug for bug" compatible RHEL clone. I have always thought that to be a good perspective. Humans are ultimately responsible for the results of computing. In my life that means I review the reports output by my ERP and sanity check numbers before I sign tax returns or remit quarterly tax payments. I trust that the numbers going in are correct, and I trust that (as was said up-thread) statistically my ERP is reliable, but at the end of the day someone has to be accountable for how the output is used.

ygjb 3y ago

We are paid exorbitantly to work hard to maintain the illusion that the computers are operating correctly. Any reasonably competent software developer or engineer should know that just because the customer dashboard is green and everything is working as expected doesn't mean that there isn't an absolute dumpster fire raging in the background (at least, having worked in tech for 20 years across many different verticals, that has been my experience).

jack_riminton 3y ago
Exactly, and edge cases can almost never be fully ruled out with sufficiently complex systems
- TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
  And that's even with things operating to some semblance of regularity and conformance to some established baseline. Not even covering the "kick it down the road" issues that sometimes (and sometimes don't) evolve into "features that aren't bugs" that have workarounds on workarounds on workarounds that will eventually have their own bugs. The stuff we know we shouldn't do / that isn't good, but that happens anyway. I subscribe to the philosophy that computers cannot be held accountable, because they're only operating as intended, or at least as implemented. CentOS used to bill itself as a "bug for bug" compatible RHEL clone. I have always thought that to be a good perspective. Humans are ultimately responsible for the results of computing. In my life that means I review the reports output by my ERP and sanity check numbers before I sign tax returns or remit quarterly tax payments. I trust that the numbers going in are correct, and I trust that (as was said up-thread) statistically my ERP is reliable, but at the end of the day someone has to be accountable for how the output is used.