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• Failure is an option (Score:2)

  by Matts (1087)

  That's the problem with software - failure really is an option. It's not like we're building bridges or hospitals.
  
  Case in point - today we discovered a bug in my spam scanning software that has been there for years. Hundreds of thousands of mails have triggered this bug. Yet we only just noticed it because failure wasn't a total showstopper. Creating the software with a tool like Alloy would have caught the bug (probably) but it would have also taken a hell of a lot longer to get the software written.
  • Re:Failure is an option (Score:2)

    by Ovid (2709)

    Depending upon what you're doing, failure may not be an option. Consider the Therac-25 [wikipedia.org], a well-known radiation therapy machine which killed at least 5 patients due to a software bug.

    Or how about the doctors who were indicted for murder [baselinemag.com] because they didn't double-check the results of some software and had several patients die as a result?

    On a less lethal scale, tests can be used to prevent software flaws from reappearing, but if the underlying design of the software is flawed, the fixes that go in place
    • Re:Failure is an option (Score:2)

      by Matts (1087)

      What I mean is it's very easy to come up with the examples of where this sort of strictness of design is necessary (medical software, flight control, etc - stuff where people's lives are at stake!) but the majority of software developers don't work in those environments. They're hacking together a tool to help put together the monthly accounts, or displaying things from a database on a web site...
      
      So what happens is that software developers don't get trained in formal design methodology, or if they do, they
      • Re:Failure is an option (Score:1)

        by mock (38)

        I have a couple of argument against this kind of reasoning.
        
        First of all, most programmers do work in enviroments where bugs matter - the internet. If your web enabled CRUD app has an exploitable vulnerability, then you risk both exposing the rest of us on the internet to DDoS attacks, worms, etc from your script kiddy owned host, and the fraud or damage to your reputation which can result from a more savvy attacker.
        
        Second, code reuse means that what looks like a non critical bug can quickly become cata
        • Re:Failure is an option (Score:2)

          by Matts (1087)

          The thing is, what you wrote is today's reality. So failure to catch those things clearly was an option, and the world hasn't ended. Yeah it sucks, but that doesn't mean we aren't coping with it (ok, so that is debatable too :-))
          
          I'm basically saying that a lot of places and jobs would like to do better, but can't afford it (again, mostly not due to financials, as catching these bugs later is more expensive, but due to time-to-market pressures).
          • Re:Failure is an option (Score:1)

            by mock (38)

            Yeah, that would be survival bias talking. When I was a kid I (ate lead paint, got shot with a bow, fell out of trees, split my head with an axe, etc) and I survived, so clearly these things aren't harmful. ;-)
            
            The problem with the "I would like to, but it costs too much" argument, is that when inevitably something bad happens, the rest of us have to pay for it. Either directly in SYN floods, indirectly through the market (phishing, cc fraud, stock scams), or worst of all, forever and ever though ill tho
            • Re:Failure is an option (Score:2)

              by Matts (1087) on 2006.06.05 7:31 (#48015) Journal

              Yup exactly, it's a mess. I suspect it won't change until people's lives are at risk though, and even then clearly that isn't enough - it needs to be a publicity disaster too. Get the newspapers to make people enraged about it.
              
              It's funny, I almost wish we as software developers had ignored Y2K. Show the public what a real disaster looks like. Lets get it right for 2038, eh?

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