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Comment by zerealshadowban | Hacker News Reader

Henry Petroski has written several excellent essays and books about engineering failures, why it is inherent in engineering pursuits that there will be failures, why it is important to learn the right lessons from these failures, and why each new generation will forget past lessons.

Start with: "To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design" (1985)

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The Brady Heywood podcast (https://www.bradyheywood.com.au/podcasts/) is great. It analyzes engineering failures, and is produced by a guy who's part of a forensic engineering consultancy.

The Apollo 13 series of episodes was gripping, and they're some of my favorite podcast episodes I've ever listened to. Way more technical detail about Apollo 13 than I had been exposed to before, along with amazing story telling. (Those episodes start here: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/apollo-13-teaser/id115...)

My thinking is that many of the kinds of engineering failure stories you refer to are about the failure, itself, or the victims of the failure (Therac-25, for example), but not often primarily about a single individual's life of failure (or even a single individual's sole role in a failure).

They might also be about the engineering teams/groups involved (Challenger explosion) and sometimes about a specific engineer (Allan McDonald).

I'd argue that all of these have immense value. The Allan McDonald story can be seen as both success/failure (failure to stop the launch, success for being right and standing firm on that belief). And while "pure failure biographies" related to engineering failures probably exist, I was able to come up with a number of examples while writing this comment for every other form of engineering failure that doesn't qualify, but couldn't think of a good example that does which I have seen/read. Many on business failures that focus on a CEO (and sometimes those CEOs are the engineer, but, again, nothing that wouldn't require reaching out to Google).

Thinking about it -- I'm glad about that. The kinds of "excellent essays and books about engineering failures" that you mention are the kinds of things I love to read. I wish there were more of them.

What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories: "I pulled up to the diner at 8:00 PM, the paint on the door was clearly done in another era; when this small part of (nowhereville) was an up-and-coming metropolis, and the place that Bob Thomas grew up and learned that hard work and determination can do anything. The "O" in the "Open" sign had failed long ago, leaving only "pen". It was a sign from the universe as I was here to write about the startup-to-empire-to-bankrupcy of ePens Custom Pens. Though I was a half-hour early, Bob was waiting for me, his hair and beard flowing together not knowing where one begins and the other ends. One can't help but being reminded of the race condition that would ultimately lead to the unraveling of the machine he'd spent his life building".

No thanks. Tell me what went wrong. Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person. And I care even less about the guy writing about the person... :)

> What I hate when I'm reading these things is the colorful, biography-like nonsense that major publications (and self-important "journalists") like to toss into stories

I've noticed that many supposedly serious, non-fiction books written in the past two decades begin (and are liberally interspersed) with such "prose"; I personally find it so irritating that I invariably drop the book immediately and read no further. As such writing doesn't seem to be associated with any particular author, publisher or theme, I imagine it represents an effort, across the publishing industry, to make non-fiction books more appealing to the general public.

Or a bit of the ego of the writer is getting in and becoming the story.

It's the "long form journalism" style; try to make journalism into "art", stretch the length of the content, and slap a minimalistic design with a fresh logo on the website in an effort to get a certain kind of audience.

Good story sells and can help reach a wider audience. Wouldn't that be valuable if you want people to learn from these failures?

As an example, the wiki page for Falcon 1 rocket is jam packed with information [0] There is a recent book pretty much depicting the same period [1]. I already knew the details thanks to the wiki page. That doesn't mean I'd want to skip the book.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_1

[1] - https://www.harpercollins.com/products/liftoff-eric-berger?v...

  > I imagine it represents an effort, across the publishing industry, to make non-fiction books more appealing to the general public.

I'd never thought about that, but I think you're right. And it really comes off distastefully -- like the writer feels they're so important that we must care about his job rather than the product. It's a sort of "code smell" for journalism for me, like the journalist is trying to personalize the story so that I feel a connection with them and accept whatever narrative they're trying to create.

The engineer in me completely agrees with you, but I have a feeling the non-fiction books are geared to be as much entertainment as they are enlightening. If you want to forgo the former, look for case studies and mishap investigations instead. The government oversight agencies have a lot available online. They are more dry but leave out the prosaic fluff

E.g., https://www.nasa.gov/columbia/home/CAIB_Vol1.html

Yes, the populist-biography kind of writing you describe is unsatisfactory, to say the least; the reason I point to Petroski's work is that he did not write like that.

Another great book to read to examine modes of engineering failure is Feynman's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" which includes some of his thoughts on the Challenger disaster.

Thanks - I haven't read either of those, but based on your description, I'll be checking them out.

"Tell me what led up to the failure -- include technical details and process/technical/decision-making that led to the failure. I don't know the engineer and my interest is in the idea/technology, not the person."

I agree with the emphasis on the technical side of things, but I would argue that some failures might have indeed something to do with the person. Their characteristics and habits. Their way of life. Even their taste in music and art. That all influences failure or succed of projects. But it is surely harder to get meaningful data out of it ..

Life is full of failure. Write a a memoir and reframe it.

> and why each new generation will forget past lessons.

This is also a reason why open source is such a useful concept

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