Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog
Software engineering, programming methodology, languages, verification, general technology, publication culture, and more
More than once I have emphasized here [1] [2] the urgency of rules requiring systematic a posteriori analysis of software mishaps that have led to disasters. I have a feeling that many more posts will be necessary before the idea registers. Some researchers are showing the way. In a June 2009 article [4], Tetsuo Tamai … Read more
Once again, and we are not learning! La Repubblica of last Thursday [1] and other Italian newspapers have reported on a “computer” error that temporarily brought thousands of accounts at the national postal service bank into the red. It is a software error, due to a misplacement of the decimal points in some transactions. As usual … Read more
Airplanes today are incomparably safer than 20, 30, 50 years ago: 0.05 deaths per billion kilometers. That’s not by accident. Rather, it’s by accidents. What has turned air travel from a game of chance into one of the safest modes of traveling is the relentless study of crashes and other mishaps. In the US the … Read more