
Software authors have professional discipline of cute puppy compared to aviation - dredmorbius
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1027539289750429696.html
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avmich
I highly suspect software industry has such a reliability record because of
the market.

In other words, I think software can be way better in terms of quality, but
nobody's interested to pay for incurred costs.

Does it mean programming should be regulated like aviation was regulated? Not
sure about that at all.

~~~
itchyouch
Absolutely. The stakes for aviation is life and death. Software generally does
not have life and death stakes that necessitates the additional discipline
cost.

~~~
Gibbon1
One thing about aviation is accidents likely require high management level
attention by manufacturers and operators.

Compare with automobiles, the CEO of GM doesn't get a phone call every time a
car kills someone. And you can see the behavior of CEO's when things become an
issue, they're annoyed and totally unprepared for it. Vs aviation managers who
see this stuff as a fact of life.

Notable management of internet companies act exactly like auto exec's being
called on the carpet for failures. Downplay and redirect blame.

Quote from the CEO of BP during the Deep Water Horizon accident: 'I want to
get my life back'

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watwut
On one hand, yes. On the other, given different stakes between what most
software companies produce and planes/elevators/medicine it is fine that we
don't have same level of safeguards. Text editor failing without loosing too
much data is already failsafe.

We could do much better at data safety, privacy etc. But if you worry about
particular data abuses by Facebook, that won't get better without regulation -
the issue is not tech maverick, the issue is that the company earns money on
that. Aviation became more safe only after regulations too.

And desinformation on Facebook is yet another entirely different issue. First,
Facebook dont really care which is why there is no report. Second, I am not
yet convinced that they have to care nor that asking sociopathic corporation
to safeguard discussion is good idea.

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nexaddo
it's too bad the ACM isn't wider spread in the industry itself among private
companies: [https://ethics.acm.org/2018-code-
draft-1/](https://ethics.acm.org/2018-code-draft-1/)

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bediger4000
This may not be a bad thing.

Aviation as an industry has been very carefully managed by the US and UK (and
maybe other) governments. This has led to a very, very low accident rate, but
it's also led to a very, very low innovation rate.

Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it's a necessary thing, but you can't just
take one facet of a complicated issue in isolation. Tradeoffs exist on
industry- or nation-wide scales.

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jillesvangurp
Ironically, software is replacing pilots and their checklists. Check lists are
essential in planes because they are complex machines with traditionally low
levels of automation. This creates extremely high workloads for pilots. The
only way to deal with that is checklists.

The solution is automation. Compare a modern fadec engine with a 50 year old
piston engine. The engine manages itself. You basically turn it on and it
regulates itself. There are still checklists of course but they are a lot
shorter. Similarly fly by wire, auto pilots, etc. have reduced workloads.
There is still plenty of opportunity to fix things.

Software could do with a lot more checks and balances. But you have to balance
the workload, overhead with the added value. Also, you need to think about
automation. Continuous deployment is basically doing exactly that. It can only
be done if you have automated tests and deployments.

~~~
dredmorbius
This gets to the problems of excessive automation: forgetting, skill loss, and
detraining, among experienced operators, and a lack of experience gain amongst
new entrants.

We're starting to see this in particular in areas without entrance barriers or
continuous training requirements, noteably automobile operation. This is
compounded by novel and nonuniform interfaces.

~~~
jillesvangurp
It's sad at a sentimental level but at the same time, the aviation industry
provides plenty of statistical material on safety.

The general trend of getting humans out of the way through automation is a
good one. Checklists are critical to make sure humans don't fail to do
something. Anything they don't have to do is an item less on the checklist and
one less thing that can go wrong. With many modern planes the startup check
list is "push the start button". Of course you still have the pre-flight
checklists and other checklists but engine management is typically fully
automated. That means no more complex failure modes because of cowl flap
management, wrong mixture or prop settings, over torquing the engine, etc.

~~~
dredmorbius
Aviation controlls the operator class.

Automotive does not.

------
dredmorbius
Related:

Computing’s Hippocratic oath is here

[https://www.fastcompany.com/90215922/why-we-spent-two-
years-...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90215922/why-we-spent-two-years-
rewriting-the-code-of-ethics-for-computing)

