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The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

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Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#131

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

roeles wrote: post #125
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I wish instead of the Therac-25, we were discussing a system which made use of unit testing and defensive coding, yet still failed. That would be more educational. It's too easy to look at the Therac-25 and think "I would never write a mess like that".

One instance that crosses my mind often is the airbus a320 incident at Hamburg in 2008. Everything was done right there, but the requirements were wrong. Despite all the procedures and tests, the software still managed to endanger the lives of the passengers.

Interesting, do you happen to have a case study?

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#132

Post by pjmlp »

ozim wrote: post #124
pjmlp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that many devlopers think that by not working with high integrity systems, such quality levels don't apply to them. Wrong, any software failure can have huge consequences in someone's life, or company, by preventing some critical flow to take place, corrupting data related to someone's life, professional or medical record, preventing a payment on some specific goods that had to be acquired on that m…

Hey don’t blame developers. It is business who requests features ASAP to cut costs and and then there are customers who don’t want to pay for „ideal software” but rather have every software for free. Most devs and QA workers I know want to deliver best quality software and usually are gold plating stuff anyway.

Being a real Software Engineer, those that actually have the proper title, eventually with the final examination, means being able to deliver the best product within the set of given constraints.

Also, speaking out when the train is visibly going against a wall.

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#133

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

franktankbank wrote: post #127
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that manufactured some of the highest-Quality photographic and scientific equipment that you can buy. It was expensive as hell, but our customers seemed to think it was worth it. > It's the end result of a process In my experience, it's even more than that. It's a culture .

A culture of high-quality engineering, no doubt. Made up of: high quality engineers!

Yes, but some of them were the most stubborn bastards I've ever worked with.

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#134

Post by anonymars »

franktankbank wrote: post #127
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a company that manufactured some of the highest-Quality photographic and scientific equipment that you can buy. It was expensive as hell, but our customers seemed to think it was worth it. > It's the end result of a process In my experience, it's even more than that. It's a culture .

A culture of high-quality engineering, no doubt. Made up of: high quality engineers!

Isn't that exactly the opposite of the point being made?

> software quality doesn't appear because you have good developers

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#135

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I worked for hardware manufacturers for most of my career, as a software guy.

In my experience, hardware people really dis software. It's hard to get them to take it seriously.

When something like this happens, they tend to double down on shading software.

I have found it very, very difficult to get hardware people to understand that software has a different ruleset and workflow, from hardware. They interpret this as "cowboy software," and think we're trying to weasel out of structure.

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#136

Post by [deleted] »

elric wrote: post #118
greazy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still an issue. I've heard stories of EMR system going down forcing staff to use pen and paper. It boggles my mind that such systems don't have redundancy. These are commercial products being deployed.

I have a few pet theories of why software in the medical space is so often shitty and insanely expensive. One of them is that working with doctors is often very unpleasant, which makes building software them unpleasant, which drives up the price. I mean some of the ones I worked with were terribly nice, especially the ICU docs and neurologists, but a large majority of them were major aholes. The other theory is there…

[deleted]

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#137

Post by siva7 »

elric wrote: post #118
greazy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still an issue. I've heard stories of EMR system going down forcing staff to use pen and paper. It boggles my mind that such systems don't have redundancy. These are commercial products being deployed.

I have a few pet theories of why software in the medical space is so often shitty and insanely expensive. One of them is that working with doctors is often very unpleasant, which makes building software them unpleasant, which drives up the price. I mean some of the ones I worked with were terribly nice, especially the ICU docs and neurologists, but a large majority of them were major aholes. The other theory is there…

It's not only the doctors, i have the gut feeling from my previous stint that people who like to work in the medical space are more often than not "difficult".

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#138

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

anonymars wrote: post #134
franktankbank wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A culture of high-quality engineering, no doubt. Made up of: high quality engineers!

Isn't that exactly the opposite of the point being made? > software quality doesn't appear because you have good developers

Not really.

Good developers are a necessary ingredient of a much larger recipe.

People think that a good process means you can toss in crap developers, or that great developers mean that you can have a bad process.

In my experience, I worked for a 100-year-old Japanese engineering company that had a decades-long culture of Quality. People stayed at that company for their entire career, and most of them were top-shelf people. They had entire business units, dedicated to process improvement and QA.

It was a combination of good talent, good process, and good culture. If any one of them sucks, so does the product.

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#139

Post by [deleted] »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #131
roeles wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One instance that crosses my mind often is the airbus a320 incident at Hamburg in 2008. Everything was done right there, but the requirements were wrong. Despite all the procedures and tests, the software still managed to endanger the lives of the passengers.

Interesting, do you happen to have a case study?

[deleted]

Re: The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

#140

Post by shmeeed »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #131
roeles wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One instance that crosses my mind often is the airbus a320 incident at Hamburg in 2008. Everything was done right there, but the requirements were wrong. Despite all the procedures and tests, the software still managed to endanger the lives of the passengers.

Interesting, do you happen to have a case study?

https://skybrary.aero/sites/default/files/bookshelf/1258.pdf
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