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Reminds me of the (alleged) reason why first Soviet Mars missions missed the planet - there was an erroneous period instead of a comma at some part of its nav program written in Fortran.

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Reminds me of the (confirmed) reason why US mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter hit the planet at the wrong angle and desintegrated in the atmosphere - there was a mix-up in imperial and SI units.

Incorrect.

According to Expert C Programming : Deep C Secrets by Peter Van Der Linden page 61:

    'Table 2-2 The Truth About Two Famous Space Software Failures

    WHEN            MISSION     ERROR                        RESULT                               CAUSE

    Summer 1961     Mercury     . used instead of ,          nothing; error found before flight   Flaw in Fortran language

    July 22, 1962   Mariner 1   "R" instead of "R̅"           $12M rocket and probe destroyed      programmer followed error
                    (to Venus)  written in specification                                          in specification'

I have no idea whether the formatting of this table will be preserved, its inclusion is to save you looking for the book, you could either download the following .pdf and search for 'mariner' due to the lack of page numbers

http://www.e-reading-lib.org/bookreader.php/138815/Linden_-_...

or just use what little Google Books provides

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4vm2xK3yn34C&q=fortra...

As you can see neither mission involved Mars and the faulty . being used instead of a , was found before it caused any harm.

More information follows on the failed Ariane 5 launch - which Bertrand Meyer attributes to "insufficient specification":

http://se.inf.ethz.ch/~meyer/publications/computer/ariane.pd...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501

or was it NASA Mariner 1 ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariner_1#Overbar_transcription...

Anyway, as always wikipedia has an interesting list of software bugs : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs

I found interesting the computer crash of F22-Raptors after crossing the International Date Line.

They don't have a Mercedes Smart bug where they mixed left and right causing the car to throw itself on its side when going through a turn.

(edit) ... and I'm downvoted. Lovely. Totally makes sense.

You probably got downvoted because you just listed this bug without offering any type of proof that this bug actually happened.

When did HN turned into Wikipedia?

I think you mean a Mercedes-Benz A class, in the moose test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test)

I have never heard that was software related, but it also is a decent bet software was involved, e.g. for stiffening the suspension. What top of the line car did not have software, in 1997?

That's the one, bingo. It was a new line of smaller MBs, so I misremembered it being Smart. The issue though was most certainly with the software overcompensating the roll in the wrong direction. I would've not remembered it otherwise :)

The A class didn't have active suspension. I believe it was a mechanical issue and solved with a stiffer front anti-roll bar and other suspension geometry tweak. Though there is a possibility the ESP was tweaked to apply the brake under such circumstances I think that could do more harm than good. I could be wrong, it was 1997.. IIRC the non-ESP MB Sprinter also had stability issues.

@sebbi - you are shadow-banned.

To have software involved with the suspension requires an active suspension, which was rare in 1997. Mercedes added an electronic stability system only after the Moose test failed, so I don't think it was a software problem in the first place (rather software fixed the problem).

The A was as far from top of the line as MB goes. It was a cheap, entry-level model.

Don't they test these programs in virtual cases with simulations of realistic data, speeds, angles, altitudes, etc...?

In 1962 there wasn't exactly enough computational power anywhere to do a reasonable simulation of a flight.

I don't know if it is just a mis-telling of the F-22 bug (I suspect it may be), but I have heard of a bug in the autopilot software of some fighter plane that would cause the plane to flip upsidedown when it was south of the equator on autopilot. Presumably this bug was discovered during simulations, and was never actually accidentally triggered in the wild.

There was a very expensive stock-trade mistake when someone issued a sell order, typing 'b' instead of 'm' for 'million'. Market dropped a significant fraction in seconds.

If you are talking about the US "Flash Crash" that theory is little more than urban legend.

Here is one of the "b" instead of "m" stories published on the day of the crash:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/36998463

Here is the Wikipedia summary of the event which lists "fat finger trade" as one of the discredited theories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash#Early_theories

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