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As an electronics guy this is really ingrained. Not only could you easily waste days on a problem if you assume things rather than check them, in some cases you

by atoav 2y ago

As an electronics guy this is really ingrained. Not only could you easily waste days on a problem if you assume things rather than check them, in some cases you might also get a painful experience or depending on what you're working on that mistake might even be your last, burn down a house, kill others or what not. Checking your priors is one thing, ensuring your stuff fails gracefully if they are abnormal another. Meanwhile most software won't even handle a network disconnect gracefully. As more and more stuff™ is moving from hardware into software, for totally understandable reasons, the absolute number of software that could absolutely ruin human lifes is growing. This calls for higher standards when it comes to the whole field of software engineering.

skydhash 2y ago
Hardware fails because of physical rules, software is more abstract and more flexible. I agree that higher standards should be required, but business people won't do it as it will make it as slow as hardware engineering. I'd love to see formal verification for at least the business core of any application. That should incentivize product managers to write better specifications.
- atoav 2y ago
  The electrical grid is typically 230/120 Volts AC at 50/60 Hz. A bad design will rely on that and fail once something about that is out of whack in either direction. A good design will gracefully shutdown, or operate normally within reasonable thresholds. You can apply the same principle to programming (in fact, many programmers do). If your program falls completely fall and explode into pieces once any peripheral, call, timing, or whatever isn't as expected, then it isn't a resilient program. If it fails in unexpected ways while still writing data you might even have a dangerous program. So many programmers are happy with writing a program that works. That would be as if a car manufacturer would be happy to call it a day if the car manages to accelerate.

by atoav 2y ago

skydhash 2y ago

Hardware fails because of physical rules, software is more abstract and more flexible. I agree that higher standards should be required, but business people won't do it as it will make it as slow as hardware engineering. I'd love to see formal verification for at least the business core of any application. That should incentivize product managers to write better specifications.

atoav 2y ago
The electrical grid is typically 230/120 Volts AC at 50/60 Hz. A bad design will rely on that and fail once something about that is out of whack in either direction. A good design will gracefully shutdown, or operate normally within reasonable thresholds. You can apply the same principle to programming (in fact, many programmers do). If your program falls completely fall and explode into pieces once any peripheral, call, timing, or whatever isn't as expected, then it isn't a resilient program. If it fails in unexpected ways while still writing data you might even have a dangerous program. So many programmers are happy with writing a program that works. That would be as if a car manufacturer would be happy to call it a day if the car manages to accelerate.