
Why Cutting Costs Is Expensive How $9/Hour Engineers Cost Boeing Billions - ericelliott
https://medium.com/javascript-scene/why-cutting-costs-is-expensive-how-9-hour-software-engineers-cost-boeing-billions-b76dbe571957
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victorNicollet
From what we know about the 737 MAX issue so far, the software not performing
as specified was not one of the causes. The article's jump from "these
accidents cost lives and money and can be resolved by a software patch" to
listing tools and processes that ensure software behaves as specified, seems
unjustified.

Even the idea that a good software engineer would have caught the problem in
the specification seems far fetched. The MCAS software was designed with a low
impact (small individual corrections, small maximum total correction) that
would have appeared safe to anyone, and those constants were increased later
on. Do we expect good software engineers to second-guess changes in physical
aero constants coming from aero engineers?

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ericelliott
The problem seems to be that the software blindly trusted input from a single
sensor. The issue I take with that is that multiple sensor readings are
available on the aircraft. Even in non-life-critical applications like video
games, software engineers absolutely are responsible for validating inputs
from untrusted sources.

Beyond that, a good software engineer would have ensured that the
specification made sense, that the integration with the rest of the system
made sense, and that a sensible override system was part of the system design.

That said, the bulk of the article focuses on management's failure to ensure
that quality was a priority, and to communicate that clearly in the company
culture.

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abdulhaq
The author read "We believe this can be updated through a software fix" and
jumped to the conclusion that this was a software fault. It was not, the
software did exactly what it was supposed to do. This is a terrible 'article'.

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ericelliott
See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326045](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326045)

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bradknowles
Got a non-paywall link?

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ericelliott
The link should not be paywall protected. Did you try it?

