A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was also found in the backup

Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by Someone1234 on Thursday January 12, 2023 @09:07AM (#34353642)

"I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from fresh CS students who haven't started working yet and think everything is a piece of demo work where the requirements don't matter and that everything is simple if you just start writing some code.

Obviously the NOTAM system isn't up to scratch, that's why we're talking about it. But "hard problems are easy" isn't constructive nor very realistic. I bet someone could put in a three-hour presentation talking about all the complexity that led us to this conclusion.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by JCM9 on Thursday January 12, 2023 @09:47AM (#34354218)

I hear you. But the flip side is there is often a tendency to massively over complicate things in a way that bakes in valueless complexity and bloat, which is very much the norm in large government systems. I’m practice this attitude is far more common and destructive long term.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by nonethewiser on Thursday January 12, 2023 @10:01AM (#34354464)

I think it's way worse than adding complexity and bloat. There are processes that specifically prevent anyone from understanding or owning the system. The complexity and bloat is a side product of the fact that the work was siloedd, contracted out, and everyone washed their hands off the result. Which also takes exponentially more time and people.

Its optimized for inefficiency.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by gnarbarian on Thursday January 12, 2023 @10:56AM (#34355423)

this is extremely accurate. it's like a giant rube Goldberg machine that takes both good code and garbage as input and produces a tremendous amount of garbage that nobody can understand once it comes out the other end.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by bink on Thursday January 12, 2023 @12:11PM (#34356926)

Do you know that each of these systems actually has a defined "owner"? It's part of the FISMA process and every so often these "owners" have to attest that certain security processes are in place and functioning and that no significant changes have been made without a full review... among many other things.

That "owner" is also a federal employee, not a contractor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Information_Security_M...

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by rattlesnakedave on Thursday January 12, 2023 @09:53AM (#34354312)

> This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from fresh CS students who haven't started working yet and think everything is a piece of demo work where the requirements don't matter and that everything is simple if you just start writing some code.

This stuff is such cringe, it is the type of response you see from jaded boomers more focused on box-ticking and punching out as opposed to doing anything new.

This is a situation where tossing the whole damn thing out and starting over again would be productive. The systems that lead to the creation of these half-fossilized government projects (that still don't work!) will not change and needs to be tossed.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by jsight on Thursday January 12, 2023 @11:07AM (#34355624)

The problem with replacing NOTAMs is that it actually is a fairly simple system that works pretty well from a technical standpoint.

The biggest issues in general relate to the data itself and the processes involved.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by nonethewiser on Thursday January 12, 2023 @10:00AM (#34354436)

> "I haven't seen the requirements, know little to nothing about the system, but I could knock that out in a weekend with a few Red Bulls." This stuff is such cringe

You mean the quote that you just made up?

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by CamperBob2 on Thursday January 12, 2023 @10:03AM (#34354495)

What makes this a hard problem, exactly? It has to work no matter what, but it also doesn't have to do very much.

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Re:A corrupt file led to the FAA ground stoppage. It was als... by gnarbarian on Thursday January 12, 2023 @10:59AM (#34355472)

I've worked directly with this system a number of times. it's basically a pub sub rss feed optimized for low latency and molested by bureaucrats for decades

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