Shitty Software Kills People

After a certain point, we recognize as a society that just because you make chairs, your not at fault if someone then takes a chair you made and then bashes someone on the head with a chair. It's the basher's fault, not yours.

The police should pursue it cases like this, and arrest the decision maker in the organization that caused this to happen. If it’s been happening repeatedly, the person’s sentence should be increased accordingly.

Are you implying that the developers that created this back office tool should be liable for the false police reports?

If so then then counterpoint based on having made back office apps: the individual contributor (i.e. developer) may either (1) have little to no say in what the app is doing as they are simply implementing the requirements as provided and/or (2) have no knowledge of how it might fail (e.g. when the app is integrated as part of larger business processes)

At the very least, for this to be fair, that list should include management, up to the CEO.

In my opinion, absolutely not! The company or corporation holds all the cards: they manage the budget, the schedule, the hiring firing and promoting. The company is responsible to marketing and what sales people are telling customers. In most cases every bit of code the developers produce is wholly and entirely the property of the company.

Blaming the developer, to my mind, only empowers companies making software like this to make more of it and to sell it more widely. I would argue that we should see harsher penalties for organizations that produce and market (or mis-market) software that is causing harm.

Bureaucratic operating procedures are often essentially malicious software that de-prioritizes the needs of ordinary citizens far below the priorities of the organization. An organization may pay some lip service to a mission of service to citizens, but usually the organization's actual, absolute top priorities are self-preservation and expanding its budget, staff, power, and influence. A secondary priority may be reducing fraud and punishing cheaters, even at the expense of honest citizens.

Though sometimes (e.g. California unemployment insurance) you get perverse outcomes where fraudsters are richly rewarded at the expense of honest citizens.

Online processes and APIs are great but we have to have backups and failsafes.

I’m sure we can find people who have died simply because they can’t navigate a webpage or an app.

As techies we assume having an app for something is the way to go - but there are many who do not have access and being able to fill out a printed form and submit it by hand is a better solution for them.

I haven't had a piece of governmental paper in my hands in my adult life (just over a decade). However, in Denmark we are very dependent on a working public IT infrastructure. After all, we are one of the countries that registers the most about their citizens.

Well, sure. But bureaucracy saves people too, and probably the balance is overwhelmingly to the second. It’s just hard to see things when they work like road safety regulations, food safety regulations, building codes and the like.

And when things work, few people complain about them; those who do may be ones who suffer a local inconvenience or lose cost-free access to a negative externality.

Agree, but I also think the point the author is trying to make is correct but maybe unclear - The main goal is to get people the vaccine, period. Everything else that is being done is being done in support of that goal. Not everyone has direct access to a printer, should that be a reason someone should not get vaccinated?

Paper ballots are great for elections, but there's no good reason paper is required to get someone Moderna/Pfizer/AZ/J&J et al.

And it's not their fault! People have only a limited capacity for things. Imagine if your car changed how it worked every week or so when you sat down to drive - driving would be nearly impossible.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/12

>>>> The number of people over 60 who didn't understand the difference between a text message and an email was around 30% (out of a sample size of 600 during my shift).

What is the difference, in plain terms?

It's easy to understand the technical difference if you remember that it's based on a historical quirk of cell phone technology and economics from 20+ years ago, that is probably not fundamental or useful today.

But try explaining it to a non techie: It's a different app, and happens to be more or less responsive depending on where you are located relative to the antenna towers, so the best explanation is just that you have to check for messages in two different ways on your phone, and not trust to receive a message immediately after it was sent.

Actually understanding the difference is as important as knowing why dialing a phone is called "dialing." For the rest of us, just make it work already.

I agree with your overall point, but I am puzzled by this detail. There is no separate app for sending SMS on iOS. The Messages app handles both the iMessage protocol and SMS, has a green bubble icon, and by default, appears in the four-item dock at the bottom of every page of the home screen. Also, app icons don’t move between pages on their own.

I'm 41, and, you know, the sort of person who reads HN, i.e., can find my way around a command line, sling enough code to get out of a paper bag, etc. And I can't make sense out of many modern UIs.

Half of them are just forests of unlabeled icons. Like, ok, what is the thing that looks like a squirrel making out with a lawnmower supposed to do?

The other half are menus inside menus inside menus inside menus where finding the functionality you want is damn near impossible.

No government or corporate webform gives you all the information you need up front---no company discloses the full price until you're about to put the credit card in, no government tells you what documents you need until you're ten pages into the application.

And don't even get me started on fashionable startups. I just joined an organization that used (past tense, I helped kill it) Basecamp to organize communications, and that thing has a totally different arbitrary nonlinear ontology from every other preexisting human communication technology. What the hell is a campfire and why can't I find my pings and what were the designers thinking to just randomly drop all of this extra cognitive load on people's heads like a pigeon with diarrhea? UI designers, please, just stop!

I am a software developer with over 20 years of professional experience designing and building systems. I recently got the COVID vaccine. While I was in the observation area, there was a screen projected advising me to set up my 2nd dose using my smartphone while I waited.

I searched for the clinic web site where I first signed up for the vaccine, and then I filled in the same form again that I used to get a my first appointment. One of the options was "Have you already had your first dose?" I checked that, and my expectation was that the system would determine that I have priority for setting the next appointment.

Instead the system kicked me into a waitlist. Fortunately, as I was leaving, the staff were adamant about asking whether I had my second appointment set up. I explained that I used the website for setting up appointments and that I was on a waitlist. They were confused and said I should have been immediately scheduled for my second appointment. Fortunately there were a couple of staffed stations set up where they could set up your second appointment if you had trouble doing it via your smartphone.

The staff member told me I had gone to the wrong website (??) and, in a slightly annoyed demeanor, asked me for my email address. They did whatever they do on their end, and I got a date and time set up.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to go to the website you initially used to set up your first appointment in order to set up your second appointment, and I'd expect the system to give you priority in getting your second appointment when you check the box indicating that you've already had your first dose. (Otherwise, why even bother asking??)

I guess the thing I was supposed to do was search my email inbox for one of three messages where there was an embedded link I was supposed to click on. But this wasn't discoverable, and none of the information on the screen told me that was what I was supposed to do.

If an experienced software developer misuses the automated system, I'm not sure how the general public doesn't run into problems using it. Of course I do have a knack for always wedging myself into the corners of almost any system I use, perhaps because I don't think like your typical member of the general public does when it comes to systems.

One of the reasons i'm getting sick of all this cloud crap and autoupdating software is that the changes are mostly cosmetic bullshit but I often have to re-learn or re-associate things. (or worse, constantly check my settings because they conveniently change in company-x's favour after a "reorganization" to give you more control or someshit)

Sometimes changes come along that are legit improvements. fine. i'll re-learn. but i'm just getting fatigued with bullshit changes.

The Massachusetts system seems pretty good with easy pre-registration and choice of ways to be contacted when you're up for an appointment. Problem with some of the other systems is you pretty much have to keep checking. I've been tempted to write some code.