Re:The programmer behind the THERAC-25 Fiasco was never found
by wpietri on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @10:06AM
(#21692830)
I am personally not looking for "a perpetrator". Many people share responsibility for a failure like this. But that's all the more reason that we should clearly describe who did what, when, and why.
Please note that you are working very hard to make up a fantasy situation that entirely exonerates the person like you. Your fantasy does not match the known facts. Think hard about why you think that's the most important thing for you to do here.
It could be worse than that. He might not have even known the actual purpose and complete function of the system for which he was writing code.
That's common when big projects get outsourced. One might call it "decomposing the problem into small tasks" but it ends up with people writing code for machinery that they have no knowledge of. I've seen this myself. These kinds of projects depend upon layers and layers of oversight and process.
I think that the folks who are looking for "a perpetrator" are utterly missing the key-value of studying the Therac-25 case study.