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Comment by fcpk | Hacker News Reader

And yet the F-35 is known for having extremely problematic software with many failures that have caused it to cause crashes/ejections.

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It has 9 million lines of code. The coding standards alone are 135 pages. Even with smart people, that sounds challenging to maintain that much C++ (I am surprised no one offered the "rust" advice yet)

that’s why it’s important to codify as many of those 135 pages into linters, static analysis tools, and units tests as possible.

Rust did not exist back then. I hope they are now using it in drone codebases.

> I am surprised no one offered the "rust" advice yet)

ADA/SPARK already owns this space.

It is often that seemingly irrelevant factors play a big role. In this case, a 141 page highly dense (and frankly boring to read) document is in its essence a liability. Engineers get bored too and it is obviously more fun to just code rather than to read a document that might aswell have been written by a lawyer.

This is also why car makers name their cars things like "Jeep Expedition" or "Ford Escape". The name doesn't change the car, but it does make it more exciting.

    In this case, a 141 page highly dense (and frankly 
    boring to read) document is in its essence a liability

So, do you think that the intent was for developers to memorize this document?

Or do you think the expectation was something more reasonable, like using this document as a tool to configure linting tools so that developers could get realtime feedback as they code?

No, that is not what I mean. The efficiency of a piece of knowledge is not only a function of its intrinsic value, but also how easy it is to understand. Sure, the people who are expected to read the document are smart and this is probably the best way to do it, but even Lockheed engineers are fallible.

If anything, the enemy will be defeated before they have had the time to understand the document in case it gets leaked xD

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