Yes, you're right! My father was an Air Force pilot and then flew a private plane into his 60's. for 40 years he religiously followed the checklists, calling out and pointing to the relevant part of the plane for each item on the list: "windows and doors, check; wing flaps set for takeoff; seats latched; seat belts locked; etc."

http://www.mooneyland.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Mooney_...

I work on medical software now. It's kind of a well known story now how doctors are resistant to using checklists, like pilots do, even though it has been proven in studies to reduce medical errors.

It's an interesting idea that maybe we could employ a form of point-and-call checklist system in software development or operations.

> It's an interesting idea that maybe we could employ a form of point-and-call checklist system in software development or operations.

Maybe copy/pasting. Highlight part of the code, copy. Go to gedit (or whatev) and paste. Doing this while "calling it".

Collaborative general purpose editors nowadays show one user's text selection to other users, so this is straightforward to implement.

I was going to say, it reminded me of those classic scenes from Dr. Strangelove of the bomber crew going through their procedures. Which I assumed to be pretty accurate for military environments. I think it's so exotic to my American eyes because there is something to the idea of putting the good of the collective ahead of your own ego that is so foreign to the American culture of fetishization of individual liberty, except maybe in our military.

It's been applied to surgery with 90-99% reductions in line infection rates. Head nurse calls the surgeon out on checklist violations.