undefined | Better HN

0 pointsTowaway6910h ago0 comments

> Perrow argues that multiple and unexpected failures are built into society's complex and tightly coupled systems, and that accidents are unavoidable and cannot be designed around.[1]

This is definitely something that is happening with software systems. The question is: is having an AI that is fundamentally undecipherable in its intention to extend these systems a good approach? Or is an approach of slowing down and fundamentally trying understand the systems we have created a better approach?

Has software become safer? Well planes don't fall from the sky but the number of zero day exploits built into our devices has vastly improved. Is this an issue? Does it matter that software is shipped broken? Only to be fixed with the next update.

I think its hard to have the same measure of safety for software. A bridge is safe because it doesn't fall down. Is email safe when there is spam and phishing attacks? Fundamentally Email is a safe technology only that it allows attacks via phishing. Is that an Email safety problem? Probably not just as as someone having a car accident on a bridge is generally not a result of the bridge.

I think that we don't learn from our mistakes. As developers we tend to coat over the accidents of our software. When was the last time a developer was sued for shipping broken software? When was the last time an engineer was sued for building a broken bridge? Notice that there is an incentive as engineer to build better and safer bridges, for developers those incentives don't exist.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

0 comments

PaulHoule9h ago

The other day I was thinking about how stupid little things in the Javascript ecosystem where you have to change your configuration file "just because" are a real billion-dollar mistake and speculating that I could sue some of the developers in small claims court.

Right away I scoffed when I heard people had 20 agents running in parallel because I've been at my share of startups with 20 person teams that tend to break down somewhere between:

- 20 people that get about as much done as an optimal 5 person team with a lot more burnout and backlash

- There is a sprint every two weeks but the product is never done

and people who are running those teams don't know which one they are!

I'm sure there are better ones out there but even one or two SD north of the mean you find that people are in over their heads. All the ceremony of agile hypnotizes people into thinking they are making progress (we closed tickets!) and have a plan (Sprint board!) and know what they are doing (user stories!)

Put on your fieldworker hat and interview the manager about how the team works [1] and the state of the code base and compare that to the ground truth of the code and you tend to find the manager's mental is somewhere between "just plain wrong" and "not even wrong". Teams like that get things done because there are a few members, maybe even dyads and triads, who know what time it is and quietly make sure the things that are important-but-ignored-by-management are taken care of.

Take away those moral subjects and eliminate the filtering mechanisms that make that 20-person manager better than average and I can't help but think 'gas town' is a joke that isn't even funny. Seems folks have forgotten that Yegge used to blog that he owed all his success in software development to chronic cannabis use, like if wasn't for all that weed there wouldn't be any Google today.

[1] I'll take even odds he doesn't know how long the build takes!

throwanem7h ago

> Seems folks have forgotten that Yegge used to blog that he owed all his success in software development to chronic cannabis use, like if wasn't for all that weed there wouldn't be any Google today.

I remember a lot of Steve Yegge's impressive claims from back when he and Zed Shaw were what I would call "fringe contemporaries" in the early 2010s - like all the time he spent gassing on about his unmaintainable, barely usable nightmare of a Javascript mode for Emacs. (I did like the MozRepl integration, for what that's worth.)

I don't particularly recall him talking about smoking pot, and I think I would have, if he'd been as memorably effusive there as about js2-mode. But it's been a lot of years and I couldn't begin to remember where to look for an archive of his old blog. Would you happen to have a link?

nhhvhy6h ago

> planes don’t fall from the sky

Boeing would like a word (; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse