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"A professor in computer engineering at the University of Toronto told me that, as a matter of course, his undergraduate students are warned about the risks of incrementing numbers in a computer program."

As someone with a computer science degree who was warned of such risks and studied the Therac-25 in my classes, this sentence made me realize how far we have to go as professionals. Something seemingly so simple as incrementing a number, one of the most common things done in a program, can cause serious problems (of course we have more help with this now than in the mid 80's). Other people must read things like that and cement any distrust they have in computers and computer programmers. And they're probably right to.




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