Re:Deep dive into the UK air traffic control meltdown
by numpad0 on Monday September 11, 2023 @12:59PM
(#37470135)
Crash is a feature, though. It's not like exceptions raises by itself into interpreter specifications. It's just that it so happens that Web apps ain't need no airbags that slow down businesses.
Re:Deep dive into the UK air traffic control meltdown
by marcosdumay on Monday September 11, 2023 @01:39PM
(#37470726)
On a multi-user system, only partial crashes are features. Total crashes are bugs.
A web server is a multi-user system, just like a country's air traffic control.
Re:Deep dive into the UK air traffic control meltdown
by Spivak on Monday September 11, 2023 @01:16PM
(#37470370)
I love that phrasing, I'm gonna use that from now on when talking about low-stakes vs high-stakes systems.
Re:Deep dive into the UK air traffic control meltdown
by acdha on Monday September 11, 2023 @02:05PM
(#37471119)
That line of reasoning is how you have systemic failures like this (or the Ariane 5 debacle). It only makes sense in the most dire of situations, like shutting down a reactor, not input validation. At most this failure should have grounded just the one affected flight rather than the entire transportation network.
How many KeyError exceptions have brought down your whole server? It doesn't happen because whoever coded your web framework knows better and added a big try-catch around the code which handles individual requests. That way you get a 500 error on the specific request instead of a complete shutdown every time a developer made a mistake.