Re:What we actually know about software development, and why...
by Agent101 on Sunday October 25, 2009 @05:23PM
(#902168)
Plane navigation is in someways easier to e-commerce sites as well. The environment that the plane is in, isn't actively malicious. You can collect accurate statistics on weather, where as the attacks and usage (with bots/scraping etc) consistently change.
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Re:What we actually know about software development, and why...
by Quarrelsome on Sunday October 25, 2009 @06:25PM
(#902251)
Not at all man. The physical environment can be much more malicious than you seem to think.
I've done some software for buses, it's toy in comparison (with planes) but you get issues with noise, power supply, vibration, temperature, light (UV killing a touch screen) and probably lots more i've never encountered. The physical world can be every bit as unpredictable as the virtual one.
Re:What we actually know about software development, and why...
by yters on Sunday October 25, 2009 @10:39PM
(#902527)
The major difference is that environmental agents are generally deterministic or stochastic, i.e. obey the law of physics. On the other hand, realms with intelligent agents, such as humans, are inherently unpredictable due to their free will (which is unpredictable by definition).
Re:What we actually know about software development, and why...
by Quarrelsome on Monday October 26, 2009 @11:59AM
(#903454)
You also have the free will of humans messing with the system (in my case, fraud prevention), also consider animals interacting the machinary while someone is not watching. I remember hearing a story about a huntsman spider regularily tripping a sensor for a program that measured the weight of lorries.
The only consistent thing you can state is that all these "real world" issues are to do with hardware whereas yours are more softwarey. However the consideration of such issues is necessary across the board.
Re:What we actually know about software development, and why...
by nopassrecover on Monday October 26, 2009 @02:55AM
(#902743)
I don't know about you but if I was writing a program to fly a plane I'd want to make damn sure I took into account an intelligent malicious agent trying to crash my plane.