Live data from Hacker News

Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation

medium.com

1–10 of 92 posts

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

#2
If you want to become a better developer through aviation, I can't recommend anything more highly than reading through NTSB accident reports. Learn from others the many, many ways small problems and misjudgements become accidents. It'll change the way you build things.

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

#4

If you want to become a better developer through aviation, I can't recommend anything more highly than reading through NTSB accident reports. Learn from others the many, many ways small problems and misjudgements become accidents. It'll change the way you build things.

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 Challenger disaster.

Thank you for recommending the NTSB reports :-)

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

#5

If you want to become a better developer through aviation, I can't recommend anything more highly than reading through NTSB accident reports. Learn from others the many, many ways small problems and misjudgements become accidents. It'll change the way you build things.

A lot of this wisdom is summarized in the book The Field Guide to Understanding "Human Error" by Sidney Dekker. I learned of it from this talk about Three Mile Island: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMk6rF4Tzsg

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

#6
I very much believe in swiss cheese safety systems. There *will* be errors, you try to avoid them becoming catastrophes.

And I hate systems that don't let you say "ignore *this* warning" without turning off all warnings. I have some Tile trackers with dead batteries--but there's no way I can tell the app to ignore *that* dead battery yet tell me about any new ones that are growing weak. (We haven't been using our luggage, why should I replace the batteries until such day as the bags are going to leave the house again?)

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

#7

If you want to become a better developer through aviation, I can't recommend anything more highly than reading through NTSB accident reports. Learn from others the many, many ways small problems and misjudgements become accidents. It'll change the way you build things.

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.

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

#8

If you want to become a better developer through aviation, I can't recommend anything more highly than reading through NTSB accident reports. Learn from others the many, many ways small problems and misjudgements become accidents. It'll change the way you build things.

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 Swiss-Cheese Model of Aviation Safety is useful to know before reading NTSB reports. It's a good lens to help in understand the context around the reports.

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

#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

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

#10

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 Swiss-Cheese Model of Aviation Safety is useful to know before reading NTSB reports. It's a good lens to help in understand the context around the reports.

The other way swish cheese is also referred to is 'breaking the chain'. Not uncommon for a bunch of individually minor things to become something major. The beauty of these reports is they help identify links that if removed, prevent the small things from becoming a serious event.
Post reply on HN