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Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if your bugfix process was broadcast to the world, every new IN added to spirateam et al, every new crash condition found by test/QA, every time the software failed in test, it got printed by news organizations the world over.

This is world the 737MAX software people are living in, for this alone, they have my utmost respect.

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Imagine a world where a certification agency tasked to examine a plane for faults before certifying it so as to assure people aren’t killed needlessly, would have actually done their job instead of outsourcing it to the very same manufacturer whose incentive it is to certify itself ASAP. Novel concept, I know.

But where would we be without corruption...

Imagine if your software had already killed a few hundred people.

Boeing developers have been put in an untenable position and should consider walking out until management does the right thing and kills the plane.

The plane has no fundamental mechanical flaw, it has a software bug.

The only flaw the plane had was being treated as 'just another 737'

It has plenty of uncertifiable components grandfathered in for 50 years, topped with ‘still within range of grandfathering’ pieces of bandaid software on top.

It’s fundamental because the whole fundament this rests one isn’t stable and all the adding instability add-ons do not make sense.

Since you seem to be an expert in airplanes and complex systems, which components are not certifiable?

the 737MAX could have been certified as a new airplane, with a new type certificate, and a new pilot type rating to go with it - but that would have removed much (or all) of its economic justification to exist.

It would be a not very good airplane. It has only 2 selling points: its type certificate, and its 737 footprint at the terminal.

Any new airplane would be a bit higher, it brings some downsides (ground operations people really like the easy access), but having bigger engines under the wings is such an advantage that it overrides all other considerations.

Thats kinda my point, the shared type certificate is most of the justification for the airplane to exist, Boeing would rather build a whole new small aircraft, people who fly on them would rather fly on a whole new aircraft - airlines however strongly prefer something that costs as little as possible to put into service - and has commonality with existing fleets, which means not a whole new aircraft.

I bet if you offered Delta some brand new MD-95's they'd take up on them, as they have basically every MD-95 produced.

And by "airlines", let's be specific: American Airlines was the carrier that specifically asked Boeing to build an 737 with new engines.

Although they didn't explicitly ask for such insane engineering compromises to have been made.

Didn't they? They asked for it fast and cheap...

Yeah, they should have been using Javascript and React by now /s

It is an old air frame, and one hard mechanical fault that is impossible to solve without a completely new air frame is the ground clearance. The low ground clearance prevents new and larger engines to be used without completely ruining the aerodynamics of the 737 airframe itself.

It has a number of bugs, resulting from the bad call that was the decision to hack the original 737 for commercial reasons (whether to appease their customers or just to save money, it doesn't matter -- it was a bad call, made for the wrong reasons, and hundreds of people are now dead because of it).

> The only flaw the plane had was being treated as 'just another 737'

Passing as "just another 737" was the whole point of this plane. Which is why it should be scrapped. Boeing and its customers will scream? Tough - next time, build a plane in the proper way, so you don't kill people. If that means making a bit less money, well, money comes and goes.

Yes this comes with "we do everything in software".

I work in automation an I guess most of our plc code is much smaller and simpler than just one website.

Software devs still live in this "you can use this software as-is" world. This thinking is just not compatible with, we use software for everything.

Even I liked PLC programming as a younger guy and a kind of I still like to do it .. you can do cool things on the machines .. the way it goes at moment does worry me quiet a bit.

And if you would work in a different job, for ex. design a building or bridges, since ever was this "if you fail, you are in the news".

So please you just software guys, grow up.

imagine if your bug has the potential to kill 300 people.

To be fair, if another 150 people die that will be the end of the 737 program - and probably Boeing. 300 more deaths is highly unlikely.

So one more plane crash is possible but two are not?? Huh?

Yes. After one more plane crash, it will probably become uneconomical for carriers to continue operating the 737.

How does a crash on the 737MAX effect operations on 737NG aircraft, or older ones - what suddenly makes it uneconomical?

Because people are made aware that Boeing wasn’t serious with engineering since 2012. And the FAA paid Boeing consultants to inspect Boeing, which by all layman’s definition fall under the terms of “corrupted”.

Who wouldn’t pay attention to the little mention in Google Flights with the brand of the plane?

I think you grossly overestimate the general public, and their ability to pay attention, or care. The 737MAX isnt the first aircraft to have an issue like this - and they kept flying them.

>And the FAA paid Boeing consultants to inspect Boeing, which by all layman’s definition fall under the terms of “corrupted”.

In my experience this is pretty normal for specialized stuff like this, it has nothing to do with corruption.

It's this way in my industry as well, it's really hard to find people who have not worked for one of the big two vendors in my field.

People's refusal to fly in anything with "737" in its name.

The whitewash is already starting.

The 737 Max name is now being replaced with the 737-8200 term (1). I assume they are hoping that 737-8200 is not tarnished like 737 Max is.

1 - https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair...

I think you underestimate Boeing size, wealth, and importance to the federal government.

This. Even is Boeing had to drop out of the airplane game _entirely_, they have a ton of other lines of business.

If another 737 Max crashed then that would be the end of the Max, IMO, but I doubt older 737s would be dropped and Boeing would still be around easily enough.

This.

- Boeing is certainly well financially engineered in many financial vehicles,

- It’s alone the #1 net exporter of USA,

- USA needs Boeing, whether it exports or not. Boeing also funds candidates, just mentioning.

- Existing conpanies need to maintain their existing planes, and they need Boeing’s consultancy for that,

- I’d say even Airbus needs their competitor, or they would fall in a dangerous monopolistic position.

As much as one would enjoy the spectacle of a corrupted eating the dust, it is probably too stable to happen. But ever heard of De Havailland? That’s probably to do with their 4 crashes in a row, due to its airframe shredding of metal fatigue and material constraints being concentrated on the edges of their square windows. Ever flew in a DC-10 or MD-11? That’s probably to do with their 4 crashes in a raw, for a bad doorlock. Just saying.

But in the days of de Havailland & McD-D, there were maybe half a dozen companies which made airliners. That's a much more Adam-Smith world than when there are exactly two.

300 people died before Boeing started acknowledging that maybe this wasn't entirely pilot's fault...

> Imagine if your bugfix process was broadcast to the world

Have you heard of the site called github?

Heard of a private GitHub?

Yes, for those who need to hide their code from public scrunity.

...or you work on closed source software in your company's private GitHub.

Closed source software should not be used in safety critical systems that affect the general public.

Most software engineers aren’t qualified to have an opinion about the quality of proprietary safety critical software systems that also happen to run against proprietary hardware.

So unless you’ve found an economical way to develop an open source jetliner... honestly, what would be the point of open sourcing safety critical systems to the general public?

I’m not at all saying it should be closed off from external safety inspectors or regulators or anything like that, but I’m not really seeing the value of opening the software up to the general public.

You'd be surprised what fraction of a safety critical codebase is just mundane code that anybody can understand with the same amount of effort it takes for "normal" software. The real problem is that most outsiders don't understand the requirements very well (unless you make them public too!), so they can likely only find "simple" code quality issues.

That’s essentially my point. Just finding simple code quality issues isn’t going to cut it, especially when you need hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware to even test the code against.

It doesn't hurt either.

Open sourcing my MRI scans for the general public to read "doesn't hurt" either. Doesn't mean it's a worthwhile/valuable thing to do.

And I also challenge you on "it doesn't hurt". Consider military adversaries developing targeted attacks against critical infrastructure because it's open sourced.

You should assume that military adversaries already have access to the source code. Spies are a thing.

So, make it worse by opening it up from the top 5-10 most capable state actors to the next 200?

This just isn’t a good idea. Full stop.

Safety critical is by design simple, it is a requirement by the norms to ensure low complexity :)

Does being qualified grant you access to the code right now? Who decides if you're qualified and if permission is granted?

I assume that currently there's several gatekeepers involved who can shut most independent investigators out.

I still really just don’t get where you’re going with this. You’d need hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of hardware to even test these kinds of software systems.

Simply reading the code isn’t going to help you find critical safety flaws.

I picture a labyrinth of outsourced spaghetti, with no real ownership anywhere.

Would be very happy to be corrected here.

Most probably wrong. Code and requirement tracability is mandatory when we do safety critical system. If you have an audit, they can pick a source file or even line of code and ask you to find why it was added and the associated requirement. They can also ask you to show the test report where it was tested

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