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AnthonyMouseyesterday at 2:02 AM2 repliesview on HN

You, an engineer at a major aircraft manufacturer that isn't Boeing, have been working after hours with some of your colleagues on a hobby project to add some modern safety features to an older model of small private plane, because you regard it as unsafe even though it still has a government certification and you got into this field because you want to save lives.

Your "prototype" is a plane from the original manufacturer with no physical modifications but a software patch to use data from sensors the plane already had to prevent the computer from getting confused under high wind conditions in a way that has already caused two fatal crashes.

Now you have to fly somewhere and your options for a plane are the one with the history of fatal crashes or the same one with your modifications, and it's windy today. Which plane are you getting on?


Replies

sarussoyesterday at 2:23 AM

This example is so right. Including the parallel with what happened with those two aircrafts.

amrochayesterday at 2:45 AM

Definitely not the untested code I wrote myself!

Are you kidding me? How many times have you unwillingly introduced bugs into a code base you didn’t fully understand? That’s basically table stakes for software engineering.

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