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I'm not sure I entirely agree in this circumstance. Normally I'd give the developers the benefit of the doubt. But the sheer number of issues, and how fundamen

I'm not sure I entirely agree in this circumstance. Normally I'd give the developers the benefit of the doubt. But the sheer number of issues, and how fundamental some of them ~were~ are[1] leave me little room for sympathy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#Problems_with_the_software https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal#Pr... Transaction idempotency is such a basic property for a financial system that I struggle to believe that Horizon was tested in any meaningful way. "the engineers who built the thing" (Gareth Jenkins) are also under investigation for perjury. [1] Horizon is still in use, in its buggy state, with replacement scheduled for 2030....

cedws 2y ago
>Normally I'd give the developers the benefit of the doubt. But the sheer number of issues, and how fundamental some of them ~were~ are[1] leave me little room for sympathy. The developers were just doing their job. It's management's responsibility to construct a functioning system of checks and balances and understand the limitations of their systems, both of which they failed to do. If it weren't for their hubris the fundamental issues with Horizon could have come to light much earlier. Let's also not forget that the reason executives are compensated well is for them to take accountability in situations like this.
- acdha 2y ago
  I think you’re trying to fit this into an exclusive OR when it really is AND. Unless the developers strongly warned management about the lack of idempotency and were ordered to continue anyway, they share the blame for those bugs even if they were not part of the conspiracy to cover them up (this also goes for anyone involved in those hot fixes trying to patch up errors without telling the customer). More broadly, your idea that this is solely a management problem is how we end in situations where developers are being told to unquestioningly code some design exactly as given, which never works. You don’t get professional judgement if you don’t accept responsibility, too.

cedws 2y ago

>Normally I'd give the developers the benefit of the doubt. But the sheer number of issues, and how fundamental some of them ~were~ are[1] leave me little room for sympathy. The developers were just doing their job. It's management's responsibility to construct a functioning system of checks and balances and understand the limitations of their systems, both of which they failed to do. If it weren't for their hubris the fundamental issues with Horizon could have come to light much earlier. Let's also not forget that the reason executives are compensated well is for them to take accountability in situations like this.

acdha 2y ago
I think you’re trying to fit this into an exclusive OR when it really is AND. Unless the developers strongly warned management about the lack of idempotency and were ordered to continue anyway, they share the blame for those bugs even if they were not part of the conspiracy to cover them up (this also goes for anyone involved in those hot fixes trying to patch up errors without telling the customer). More broadly, your idea that this is solely a management problem is how we end in situations where developers are being told to unquestioningly code some design exactly as given, which never works. You don’t get professional judgement if you don’t accept responsibility, too.