VW • Hacker News Board

Re: VW

#31

Post by woah » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #23

Silhouette wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with licensing a profession like software development is that no-one really knows how to do it very well yet. It's far too young and diverse an industry to have that level of experience and consensus. Lacking more objective standards, the most likely result of attempting to regulate at this stage seems to be regulators who talk a good talk -- such as the author of this article. Those people will not neces…

The trouble with licensing a profession like software development is that no-one really knows how to do it very well yet. It's far too young and diverse an industry to have that level of experience and consensus. Only artificially so. Modern software development is mainly about re-inventing wheels from the 1970s with slightly different syntax and more bugs in. If we had settled on a language - doesn't matter what, Ad…

Luckily we settled on C and we've all seen how bug-free that turned out to be /s

Re: VW

#32

Post by radiorental » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

mpclark wrote: post #28

sebastianavina wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

remember, someone wrote the emissions defeatos, AND maintained the code for seven years until now.

It may not have been actual code. Perhaps only values in a look-up table? Perhaps even values in an area of a multi-dimensional array that was never expected to be used.

The tune-able parameters are lookup tables. I know that Ford, for example, will go through up to 15 iterations per day with testers in the field, in various physical environment, leading up to a release.

The code that detected whether the vehicle was on the road or being tested is what is at issue here. It was a software engineer/manager that implemented it.

Re: VW

#33

Post by callesgg » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:05 PM UTC

While the ethics behind the implementation might have been obvious, the actual legality of is not. The law could very well have been written in a way that makes this completely legal.

A software engineer would most likely not know the intricate details of the law required to know whether it was legal(in all nations) or not.

Re: VW

#34

Post by Maarten88 » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #17

I find his assertion that the programmers "should have known" to be beyond naive. There's a reason that teams designing these sorts of systems consult with lawyers who are experts on the relevant law. The programmer's job is to program. Expecting them to also deal with details of legality and morality (beyond grossly obvious things like hard coding dosage limits into medical equipment) is just wishful thinking. That'…

> The programmer's job is to program...

I think an engineer has more responsibility than following orders. Especially a German engineer should be aware of this. "Ich habe es nicht gewüst" is only an excuse as long as it is true.

Re: VW

#35

Post by resu_nimda » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #17

I find his assertion that the programmers "should have known" to be beyond naive. There's a reason that teams designing these sorts of systems consult with lawyers who are experts on the relevant law. The programmer's job is to program. Expecting them to also deal with details of legality and morality (beyond grossly obvious things like hard coding dosage limits into medical equipment) is just wishful thinking. That'…

The programmer's job is to program. Expecting them to also deal with details of legality and morality (beyond grossly obvious things like hard coding dosage limits into medical equipment) is just wishful thinking.

We're humans, not robots. People can be expected to think about things and participate in society. It's generally held that we should expect pretty much everyone to concern themselves with details of legality and morality as part of being a good citizen... "I'm just a simple automaton doing what I'm told" is generally not a valid excuse.

Do you actually know programmers who literally just take specs and implement them and have no thoughts or opinions about the larger context of what's going on? In my experience, programmers have a lot to say about non-programming aspects of work.

The other issue here is, what constitutes "grossly obvious?" You just drew a totally arbitrary line based on your own opinion of what can be expected and what can't. Your argument is a bit of a strawman, nobody is expecting coders to go read up on case law.

Ultimately, we don't know anything about what happened at VW. We don't know who was responsible, or who knew what, and we're all just crafting up scenarios and speculation ("you see, the specs were such that the engineers couldn't possibly have known what was going on") based on our own experiences and biases.

Re: VW

#36

Post by moomin » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:22 PM UTC

sauere wrote: post #2

> It doesn't matter that their bosses told them to do it. They did it. It's not that easy. Sure, what they done can be considered "evil"... but what if they had refused to do it? They would have most likely lost their jobs and they would have no chance in a court trial. Volkswagen has a army of lawyers and is in tightly connected with every relevant government agency in Germany.

Exactly, Uncle Bob is in the category of people who can walk away if it suits them (he's got fuck you reputation if not fuck you money). So are (some of) the bosses. The developers weren't.

The problem here is Uncle Bob thinks he's in the trenches when in fact he's armchair quarterbacking.

Re: VW

#37

Post by gaius » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:25 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #31

gaius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with licensing a profession like software development is that no-one really knows how to do it very well yet. It's far too young and diverse an industry to have that level of experience and consensus. Only artificially so. Modern software development is mainly about re-inventing wheels from the 1970s with slightly different syntax and more bugs in. If we had settled on a language - doesn't matter what, Ad…

Luckily we settled on C and we've all seen how bug-free that turned out to be /s

If C was the only language, then a vast body of experience would exist in it and no-one would be writing new code with off-by-one errors in it. What we have right now is everyone "knows" many languages, but actually has little experience with each one. And given the chance to use a new language, we jump at it, even tho' we all know better.

Re: VW

#38

Post by mehrdada » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:34 PM UTC

Even if everything in the article were right, I disagree with the conclusion. I'm glad there we have no "profession" to act as another gatekeeper for people to do things. The negative consequences of such "licensing" system (which will probably transform into a political pact soon enough after introduction) are more profound than the cost of its nonexistence.

Re: VW

#39

Post by tzs » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 5:41 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #4

I suppose you could make the argument that these programmers did not know what they were doing. That they were simply given some specs, and they implemented those specs, and didn't know that they were accomplices in a case of massive fraud. I think that argument is even more asinine than Michael Horn's. They knew. And if they didn't know, they should have known. They had a responsibility to know. I agree with all the…

From what I've read, the trigger for the mode switch was very detailed and narrowly tailored to the EPA certification testing, and included barometric pressure as a factor.

That makes it quite a bit harder to believe that whoever implemented it thought it was for some legitimate testing. For testing you want a trigger that is hard for anyone to hit accidentally, but easy for people who know about it to hit. You would not include barometric pressure, because that narrows the ability to get into the test mode way too much.

An ideal sequence would be some nonsensical sequence of inputs, like a specific sequence of left and right steering inputs, with a specific sequence of turn signals (often opposite of the direction turned) if the ECU has turn signal data available, interleaved with a specific pattern of taps on the brakes.

Re: VW

#40

Post by dmux » Sun, Oct 18, 2015, 7:22 PM UTC

resu_nimda wrote: post #35

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #17

I find his assertion that the programmers "should have known" to be beyond naive. There's a reason that teams designing these sorts of systems consult with lawyers who are experts on the relevant law. The programmer's job is to program. Expecting them to also deal with details of legality and morality (beyond grossly obvious things like hard coding dosage limits into medical equipment) is just wishful thinking. That'…

The programmer's job is to program. Expecting them to also deal with details of legality and morality (beyond grossly obvious things like hard coding dosage limits into medical equipment) is just wishful thinking. We're humans, not robots. People can be expected to think about things and participate in society. It's generally held that we should expect pretty much everyone to concern themselves with details of legali…

Do you actually know programmers who literally just take specs and implement them and have no thoughts or opinions about the larger context of what's going on?

Sadly, yes. I've found this to be the case with most outsourced developers I've managed. They follow the spec to the T even if there's a glaring issue staring them in the face.