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A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

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Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#51

Post by travmatt »

meowface wrote: post #47
amelius wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... they test the living shit out of it. Then, once it's working, they don't change it except under extreme pressure. I wonder if self-driving car manufacturers will apply this same philosophy.

They're gonna have to. The first self-driving fatality (that isn't the fault of the driver or nearby drivers) is going to very severely impact any self-driving car manufacturer's brand.

Hasn't a Tesla self-driving system already caused a fatality when the system failed to identify a truck approaching from a perpendicular angle?

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#52

Post by hindsightbias »

mcguire wrote: post #20
lisper wrote: post #3

This article is very much at odds with my 15-year (1988-2000, 2001-2004) experience writing software at NASA (albeit at JPL, which is to say the unmanned space program, but still NASA). In my experience there was just as much politics, marketing hype, and general bullshit as I've seen in the commercial world. It was actually pretty amazing to me some times that things worked at all, let alone that they worked as well…

As I wrote when this showed up on proggit, Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would be very skeptical about using NASA as a good example for much of anything, but especially software development. My bonifides: I'm 49; have spent roughly 25 years as a systems programmer, systems administrator, and general bit wrangler; and I worked for 8 years at the Marshall Space Flight Center, specifically the NASA Enterprise…

I never knew what code post-80's NASA regulars actually wrote. When the MCC was moved off of the mainframe (MOC), it was all contractors. A crazy mix of skillsets in C/C++. A lot of subsystems/silos. Working across silos, it was incredible the brain trust you could meet from the old crowd (often retirees brought in for 2AM tests). I learned a lot of kids were afraid to say wtf. These old coots would love to talk for hours if you asked why something was done that way.

Considering the TRAJ assembly probably went back to DEW Line, I have no idea how they peeled that logic off. I still run into LockMart folks running ancient ATC code on Unix variants that have been out of service for over a decade.

Our code will never last that long.

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#53

Post by pif »

Software is not Modern or Ancient. Software is either Good (i.e. it works as it is supposed to do AND it is easily maintainable and modifiable) or Bad. NASA clearly needs Good software, and indeed the article never mentions arbitrary deadlines.

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#54

Post by tfvghbv »

amelius wrote: post #39
lisper wrote: post #3

This article is very much at odds with my 15-year (1988-2000, 2001-2004) experience writing software at NASA (albeit at JPL, which is to say the unmanned space program, but still NASA). In my experience there was just as much politics, marketing hype, and general bullshit as I've seen in the commercial world. It was actually pretty amazing to me some times that things worked at all, let alone that they worked as well…

> ... they test the living shit out of it. Then, once it's working, they don't change it except under extreme pressure. I wonder if self-driving car manufacturers will apply this same philosophy.

Bullshit. Toyota sudden acceleration anyone?

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#55

Post by [deleted] »

travmatt wrote: post #51
meowface wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're gonna have to. The first self-driving fatality (that isn't the fault of the driver or nearby drivers) is going to very severely impact any self-driving car manufacturer's brand.

Hasn't a Tesla self-driving system already caused a fatality when the system failed to identify a truck approaching from a perpendicular angle?

[deleted]

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#56

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

lisper wrote: post #3

This article is very much at odds with my 15-year (1988-2000, 2001-2004) experience writing software at NASA (albeit at JPL, which is to say the unmanned space program, but still NASA). In my experience there was just as much politics, marketing hype, and general bullshit as I've seen in the commercial world. It was actually pretty amazing to me some times that things worked at all, let alone that they worked as well…

> This article is very much at odds with my 15-year (1988-2000, 2001-2004) experience writing software at NASA (albeit at JPL, which is to say the unmanned space program, but still NASA). In my experience there was just as much politics, marketing hype, and general bullshit as I've seen in the commercial world.

An institution's philosophy is almost always bullshit. Whether it is Google's "Don't be evil" or north korea's "worker's paradise" or our own "capitalist democratic paradise".

The media isn't a fount of journalist integrity. The government isn't a found of "goodwill towards its citizens". The military isn't "defending the peace".

It's sad but the more you work and the older you get, the more the facade crumbles. At the end of the day, it's just fallible humans trying their best to get by.

Re: A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy

#57

Post by meowface »

travmatt wrote: post #51
meowface wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're gonna have to. The first self-driving fatality (that isn't the fault of the driver or nearby drivers) is going to very severely impact any self-driving car manufacturer's brand.

Hasn't a Tesla self-driving system already caused a fatality when the system failed to identify a truck approaching from a perpendicular angle?

As far as I know, all investigations into Tesla self-driving fatalities didn't find the system at fault.
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