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Comment by throwaway0a5e | Hacker News Reader

>I have to say that sounds exactly how this kind of software should be built.

You see this in every topic.

Every "muh pride in muh trade" person says something like this about the relevant trade but the fact of the matter is that the world runs on off-brand duct tape, harbor freight tools, walmart jeans, economy tires, and all sorts of other "value" solutions and the race to the bottom is what has given us much of the modern world that we take for granted.

A balance needs to be struck. And it generally needs to be struck further toward the "quickly and cheaply build it like crap but make it easy to override or reset" portion of the available solution space than anyone pontificating about quality on the internet will readily admit.

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We don't say "perfection is impossible" when it comes to bridges collapsing. We understand that yes, on rare occasion a bridge WILL collapse, but we go and find the people responsible, and we still hold them accountable.

This is a level of accountability that basically every other field of engineering is held to, and they've all risen to the challenge and left the "off-brand duct tape" behind.

Even within programming, planes don't fall out of the sky daily, so I feel safe assume the aerospace programmers are comfortable working with a high degree of responsibility. High speed traders are dealing with million-dollar stakes and a single mistake can make the news. I'd expect they've got a very accountable culture where people get fired when that happens.

There are costs, yes, but there's also costs to keep 733 people illegally imprisoned - we're talking two man-years of peoples lives lost every DAY this goes on.

Why not hold the people accountable that deployed the tool? Ultimately the tool helps a human do the job. It doesn't do anything on its own. If a contractor shows up to do repairs in your house, but their hammer is faulty and the head flies through your window you don't talk to the hammer manufacturer. You talk to the contractor. It's the contractor's job to deal with wherever they got the hammer from.

If software developers are held responsible for the software then expect costs to multiply. Nobody would directly sell you software either - they'd sell you a hardware and software bundle that you must use exactly as the developers say. If you input a value that's out of bounds then that's on you. The software also won't get updates and it will run on 20 year old hardware. That's not too dissimilar to what we have in aerospace, right? And developers aren't even held responsible there! It's the companies, so expect it to be worse than even that.

Would you blame the people who paid for the bridge for the collapse? Should they have understood the details and flagged where corners were cut.

When it comes to critical system I think it's fair to say that the engineers who build it are the only ones who can fully understand the risk.

This is the point behind accreditation. It forces the supplier to maintain a minimum bar for services to protect the reputation of the industry.

In real life the engineers don't police themselves.

Before a bridge, house or even patio deck with a foundation is used a safety inspector needs to give approval.

Are safety inspectors intended to validate the design of a bridge? Or just that construction and materials are up to spec?

>We don't say "perfection is impossible" when it comes to bridges collapsing.

Yes we do. People on the internet might not but look at the formal documentation that goes with any bridge plans. It will talk about factors of safety, various loads, environmental conditions and establish a set of constraints outside of which the bridge is not expected to perform as advertised.

>speed traders are dealing with million-dollar stakes and a single mistake can make the news

It's really easy to put HFT a pedestal when you can't inspect it up close but I assure you that for every Citadel and P72 there is half a dozen firms with sloppy software that goes absolutely crazy if non-ideal but foreseeable things happen. These people are making money hand over fist (kind of) by building to the minimum. There's one firm I want to name because of how much everything they have is held together with duct tape but they're nice guys so I won't.

> the world runs on off-brand duct tape

So very, very true.

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