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Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

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Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#21

Post by tialaramex »

eschneider wrote: post #7
jimkleiber wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really glad I stumbled on your comment. I train people in conflict resolution and emotional leadership and I've been looking for places to learn more about conflicts and causes and I think these NTSB reports could provide me a lot of examples from which to learn. They remind me of how at college I had a class on business communication and we discussed the communication issues that led to the Space Shuttle Challen…

The cliff note version: More people die because they're in a hurry/feel pressured and push a marginal situation when they should have known better than you could possibly believe.

This is one of the sadder reasons why scheduled aviation is so safe. When flying planes is your job, why would you ever push your luck? I feel so tired, that storm looks pretty nasty, or the maintenance guy seemed like he had no idea why it's doing that - fuck it, we're not going, get the airline to put you on another plane if there is one, otherwise get them to pay for your hotel, I'm not flying anywhere today.

One safeguard that is needed, and I believe is provided even in the US - is a strong union to ensure that "Because I'll get fired unless we go" isn't the answer. People in safety critical roles must be protected so that "No" is always an option for them.

For private pilots, reasons to push your luck sneak over from real life. To get home before the twins are asleep. To be back in time for work tomorrow. So that I don't miss Trisha's wedding. Because the replacement was very expensive and I can't afford it right now. The fuel prices are lower back home, we'll fill up there.

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#22

Post by warner25 »

It seems like there are almost daily HN front page items about aviation, and a lot of pilots in the comments. I've wondered about the reasons for such an overlap in interests among people here.

I fit this myself: I grew up playing flight simulators, studied computer science as an undergrad, was a military helicopter pilot for a while, and then went to grad school for computer science. Along the way, I've personally met at least half a dozen other academic computer scientists with a pilot's license or military aviation background. Is it just selective attention / frequency illusion for me, or is there more to this?

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#23

Post by JohnFen »

warner25 wrote: post #22

It seems like there are almost daily HN front page items about aviation, and a lot of pilots in the comments. I've wondered about the reasons for such an overlap in interests among people here. I fit this myself: I grew up playing flight simulators, studied computer science as an undergrad, was a military helicopter pilot for a while, and then went to grad school for computer science. Along the way, I've personally m…

> I've wondered about the reasons for such an overlap in interests among people here.

I bet that a large part of why is that people here tend to have reasonably high incomes, and flying is an expensive hobby. I'm sure that flying would be an incredibly popular hobby across all demographics if it were affordable.

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#25

Post by SoftTalker »

Animats wrote: post #20

Minor lessons from time at an aerospace company: - When your device is in use in the field, the user will be too hot, too cold, too windy, too dark, too tired, too wet, too rushed, or under fire. Mistakes will be made. Design for that environment. Simplify controls. Make layouts very clear. Military equipment uses connectors which cannot be plugged in wrong, even if you try to force them. That's why. (Former USMC off…

I like the term "defect" it's more accurate than "bug."

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#26

Post by treve »

SoftTalker wrote: post #25
Animats wrote: post #20

Minor lessons from time at an aerospace company: - When your device is in use in the field, the user will be too hot, too cold, too windy, too dark, too tired, too wet, too rushed, or under fire. Mistakes will be made. Design for that environment. Simplify controls. Make layouts very clear. Military equipment uses connectors which cannot be plugged in wrong, even if you try to force them. That's why. (Former USMC off…

I like the term "defect" it's more accurate than "bug."

Is it? I think the definition of Bug is literally defect. Maybe it carries a different 'weight' for some people?

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#28

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

> Build for resiliency and designed to fail safely

This is important, but I'm not sure everybody necessarily agrees on what "fail safely" means.

Fail safely can mean one of:

- It doesn't fail silently

- It doesn't cause cascading failures

- It doesn't cause infinite failure loops

- It doesn't fail in ways that corrupt data

- It doesn't fail in ways you lose money

- You can safely retry

- You can safely retry anytime (not just today, or just this month)

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#29

Post by tdubhro1 »

treve wrote: post #26
SoftTalker wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the term "defect" it's more accurate than "bug."

Is it? I think the definition of Bug is literally defect. Maybe it carries a different 'weight' for some people?

I think for many people “Bug” can imply something that crawled in from outside and messed up the system, “defect” implies that there was an avoidable deficiency in the specification or the implementation. The engineering mindset might prefer “defect” since it implies that we can fix the process and improve the quality of future products, whereas “bug” implies these things are just a fact of life and you can’t expect to eliminate them

Re: Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

#30

Post by josefrichter »

gbacon wrote: post #14
KolmogorovComp wrote: post #9

> NATO Phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…). NIT, A is written as Alfa in the NATO alphabet [0] as it is easier to understand its pronunciation. For the same reason J is written as Juliett (two t), because in some languages t can be silent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_phonetic_alphabet

Don't forget their cousins "tree" and "fife" — or the overpronunciation of Papa as /papà/.

I once heard a recording of a conversation between ATC and an aircraft with a registration OK-PPP. Every communication from either side starts with Oskar Kilo Papapapapapa :-)
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