5 ms·
I file it under "funny" but certainly it is nothing unusual or surprising. Software, like anything else, has faults and breaks. Even on an airplane. It mostly
by limaoscarjuliet 11y ago
I file it under "funny" but certainly it is nothing unusual or surprising. Software, like anything else, has faults and breaks. Even on an airplane.
It mostly is funny to us, developers, because we have all been trying to convince our bosses that "it will never happen". That object_id being an int4 sequence? You would need one object a second for 70 years to overflow. And yet, somehow, it does, e.g. because someone loaded data with object_id set to 1.9B and the sequence followed from there.
P.S.
My favorite pastime? Watching Aircraft Disasters series in an airport. Not brave enough to watch it during the flight yet. Karma might be a bitch and I do not want to test it 10 km up there ;-)
- istvan__ 11y agoLike everything else? What was the last time the Golden Gate bridge collapsed? :) Everything else does not include the most of the engineering output. In software faults are more common because of the tools we are using and because there is no life in danger if Twitter is down. On the other hand, we cannot allow a bridge to collapse or an airplane to fall down from the sky because it has a fault. There are several techniques to build reliable systems out of non-reliable parts.
- foota 11y agoI don't think this is a one to one comparison, bridges etc get maintenance work done all the time to fix small issues, and they do fail.
- istvan__ 11y agoSee above, I am talking about the frequency of catastrophic failures. I agree it is not a good comparison.
- ams6110 11y agoBridge collapses are actually not that uncommon. While often times overloading or damage is the cause, sometimes it's due to design flaws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures
- istvan__ 11y agoI think the point is the frequency.