
The Tower of Babel and the Fighter Plane (2013) [pdf] - tomaskazemekas
http://melconway.com/keynote/Presentation.pdf
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jason_s
Great read!

Complexity is evil evil evil (my take on it:
[http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/132.php](http://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/132.php))

<quote from Conway's article>

Incidentally, today’s automobiles share this problem of a massive amount of
on-board code and the bugginess that accompanies it. A few years ago, some
Mercedes owners found that when they pushed a certain button on the navigation
system the driver’s seat moved.

</quote>

I have this sinking feeling that my death is going to occur because of some
interaction between software/firmware design and an unexpected situation (e.g.
stuck in an elevator between floors because the firmware is expecting internet
packets from Twitter or something). Hope I'm wrong, but the complexity of
electronics seems to be increasing fast enough for system reliability to
decrease.

~~~
xlm1717
I doubt that scenario you mentioned will cause your death. The firemen will
get you out.

~~~
jason_s
Yeah, it'll probably be a car crash or a hospital equipment failure :/

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jloughry
This is the Mel Conway of "Conway's Law" named by Fred Brooks in _The Mythical
Man Month_. Don't skip it just because it seems to be about the F-35; it
isn't. It's about complexity, concurrency (the risk thereof) and---at the very
end---about abstractions for fitting huge systems into your head.

~~~
ckozlowski
Seconding this recommendation. It's not bashing the F-35 as an aircraft, but
taking aim at the program. Sadly, as he points out, it's happened plenty of
times before. The F-35 program just happens to be egregious because it started
out so big.

Highly recommend this read.

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CapitalistCartr
The key to making strong systems is to make each component do one thing, and
do it well, the Unix way. Each plane does one thing, does it the best. When
the leader deploys each plane to do that job, he can count on it. The last
time we tried to make one plane do it all we got the F-111, which also didn't
do anything the best, except the FB-111 made a fine bomber. Past, repeat, etc.
Don't build the complexity into a component; build it into the overall system,
the whole computer, not the individual plane or program.

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smcl
I'm having trouble accessing this - quick copy-paste link of Google cache for
anyone else with the same trouble:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYm78Yt...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:WYm78YtsiR0J:melconway.com/keynote/Presentation.pdf+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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JabavuAdams
Weird: strong start, leading up to a tantalizing claim, and then ... it just
ended.

