I don’t know what kind of toaster you have but mine doesn’t have thousands of parts. Maybe 20 or so.
Re:Write Better Error Messages
by frontiersummit on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @06:38PM
(#33268753)
A toaster is probably a bad example, given the common error states (burnt toast, stuck toast) which are no doubt amplified by design flaws in some units. I've never seen a toaster with 2000+ components, so maybe such a machine is different. A toaster is also historically famous for a dangerous error state: if the plug is inserted the wrong way round, the coils will be switched on neutral. A toaster which is "off" is thus liable to shock an unwitting person using a fork to resolve the stuck-toast error state.
My toaster is a complex bit of engineering - it has thousands of parts which all work together to take power from the wall to make toast.
Yet it has no errors. It just does the job I ask it to do.
A computer on the other hand seems to have a lot of ways to fail, and does so nearly every day. I suspect everyone reading this comment has seen at least one error today. Can't we engineers make the software better so that these errors can't/don't happen?