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A comment on How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Developer. Parent comment

Re:How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Devel... by outworlder on Thursday April 18, 2019 @07:37PM (#19695737)
> Regarding #6...Boeing charged $80k to unlock the software feature to gather data from more than 1 angle of attack sensor.

80k for a _light_ in the panel, not to have MCAS take the two sensors into account - which it couldn't do anyway. With two sensors, how do you know which one is right and which one is faulty?

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Re:How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Devel... by kortilla on Thursday April 18, 2019 @07:46PM (#19695788)
Well you can’t get quorum but you can certainly shut off when you detect a conflict.
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Re:How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Devel... by ReGenGen on Thursday April 18, 2019 @08:14PM (#19695948)
you can't shut MCAS off AND also NOT train the pilots on the system and MAX flight characteristics. Conflicting system goals.
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Re:How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Devel... by bm98 on Thursday April 18, 2019 @08:42PM (#19696086)
To me this is the crux of the issue. And it's non uncommon in software development:

The developer fails to check for an error condition or raise an exception because doing so would add too much complexity to the system. So instead it is assumed (or hoped) that it simply can't or won't happen. Problem solved...

(Edit: Or that the user will just have to reboot if it happens.)

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Re:How the Boeing 737 Max disaster looks to a software Devel... by ReGenGen on Friday April 19, 2019 @12:30AM (#19697116)
Yes. Not checking for errors is the feature of the MCAT "solution" which hides the system from pilot's training AND involvement with other 727 system/team engineers. A bureaucratic solution to a marketing problem. I wonder how many programers they had to go though to find it.
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