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Software Bugs That Cause Real-World Harm

Years ago, when I was an undergraduate student at McGill, I took a software engineering class, and as part of that class, I heard the infamous story of the Therac-25 computer-controlled radiotherap…

Click to view the original at pointersgonewild.com

Hasnain says:

Great read.

"The point of this blog post is that, although most of us don’t work on software that would directly be considered safety-critical, we live in a world that’s becoming increasingly automated and computerized, and sometimes, bugs in seemingly mundane pieces of code, even web apps, can cause real-world suffering and harm, particularly when they go unfixed for weeks, months or even years. Part of the problem may be that many industry players lack respect for software engineering as a craft. Programmers are seen as replaceable cogs and as “code monkeys”, and not always given enough time to do due diligence. Some industry players also love the idea that you can take a random person, put them through a 3-month bootcamp, and get a useful, replaceable code monkey at the other end of that process. I want to tell you that no matter how you got to where you are today, if you do your job seriously, and you care about user experience, you could be making a real difference in the quality of life of many people. Skilled software engineers don’t wear masks or capes, but they can still have cool aliases, and they truly have the power to make the world better or worse."

Posted on 2023-05-30T05:22:16+0000