737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer

Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by abalone on Monday March 18, 2019 @12:13AM (#19418649)

Sure, it’s a system failure not strictly a software failure, but I don’t think the Boeing software engineers are off the hook here. Software is where the whole system comes together. Software is what can mitigate sensor failures. Software is the top of the stack that gets certified for reliability.

A good safety culture will not have even a whiff of a “not my job” attitude. The software team should never have signed off if they noticed that a single sensor failure could cause their “correct to spec” program to crash the darn plane (if that’s indeed what happened).

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Re:737 Max Explanation by a Software Engineer by autopilotsw on Monday March 25, 2019 @08:07AM (#19481801)

I think when people say software error it is in a general sense. It mean the problem is in the software as opposed to hardware. The are different types of software errors. A software error can be a coding error or a bad requirement. In the case the requirements are the issue. In my career we had safety, systems and software engineers. An experienced software engineer might have challenged the requirement in this case but the design safety would fall more on the system and safety engineers.

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