alt Hacker NewsWhile it is conceivably possible to write perfect software that will run flawlessly on a perfect computer forever, the reality is that the computer it runs on and the devices it controls will eventually fail - it's just a question of when and how, never if. A device that hasn't failed during its lifespan was simply not used long enough to fail.
In light of this, even software development has to focus on failures when you apply this standard. And that does include considerations like failures occurring with in the computer itself (faulty RAM or faulty CPU core).
The problem of focusing on failures is that such analysis misses all the losses that occur even when everything works as designed. Analysis has to focus on all losses -- both failures (often the trivial case) and non-failures (design errors, often trickier to find.)