Feynman, Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering

fun fact about the challenger disaster. letting it launch at all was clearly an infovis fail, as tufte explains:

http://www.asktog.com/books/challengerExerpt.html

(i guess a lot went wrong)

We suck because we constantly ignore well-established, well-known, empirically proven practices.

And we ignore them because we are in such a hurry to release anything that is "good enough". (But then again, a social website != space shuttle software.)

I forget where I read this quote, but here it is paraphrased: "Whereas in Physics people stand on the shoulders of giants, in Computer Science people stand on each other's toes."

Excellent Article. Thought I am very skeptical about its relevance to SWE, the report however is worth a read.

Feynman's report comments briefly on the software, but it is much more relevant as a way of thinking about engineering in general.

best piece i ve' read all day.