Posted on 05/19/2020 8:42:42 AM PDT by Beave Meister
In the history of expensive software mistakes, Mariner 1 was probably the most notorious. The unmanned spacecraft was destroyed seconds after launch from Cape Canaveral in 1962 when it veered dangerously off-course due to a line of dodgy code.
But nobody died and the only hits were to Nasas budget and pride. Imperial Colleges modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions for Covid-19 which helped persuade the UK and other countries to bring in draconian lockdowns will supersede the failed Venus space probe and could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost.
Since publication of Imperials microsimulation model, those of us with a professional and personal interest in software development have studied the code on which policymakers based their fateful decision to mothball our multi-trillion pound economy and plunge millions of people into poverty and hardship. And we were profoundly disturbed at what we discovered. The model appears to be totally unreliable and you...
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Seems most/all have forgotten the 737 MAX issue. New version of software caused the pilots to be unable to correct pitch problems before loss of control. Killed over 300.
Having used a sly drool thru college and later - and having adopted the use of an HP-35 to do homework in preparation for the Professional Engineer exam, I forgot one day to bring the 35 home from work. No problem, right? I just broke out the old slide rue and tried to do the homework.I can assure you that a slide rule is well and truly obsolete.
If youre out of practice - and perhaps even if not - keeping track of the decimal point is simply too hard.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.