At a recent software engineering management course in the US, the participants were given an awkward question to answer.

“If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software how many of you would disembark immediately?”

Among the ensuing forest of raised hands, only one man sat motionless.

When asked what he would do, he replied that he would be quite content to stay onboard.

With his team’s software, he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.

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Phil
Phil
13 years ago

he must have been a Microsoft programmer…

scott
scott
13 years ago

sounds like a pretty shitty professor if no one in the class trusts themselves with the material they’re supposed to be learning. (and yea, engineering and programming control systems is hard as hell, just finished that class)

Frank
Frank
13 years ago

Scott, you cant even use capital letters! Please keep out of writing software for critical systems! 🙂

Bean
Bean
13 years ago

Frank, you only put one space in between your exclamation point at the end of the first sentence and the beginning of the next sentence. Additionally, you neglected to use an apostrophe in your spelling of “can’t.” Please pay more attention to detail going forward.

Corn
Corn
13 years ago

Bean, you are a bean, you can’t go on the internet! Beans can’t even type!

stairforce
stairforce
12 years ago

Personally, I think that people who write software for aircraft should be told in advance that as part of the acceptance procedure, they will be required to complete a flight in an aircraft using their software. Similarly, I think maintenance engineers should be on board during test flights after they have worked on aircraft. I say this as a software engineer of 30 years experience and a (former) private pilot of 20 years experience. I always used to make sure the walk-round check was extra thorough if I knew an aircraft had just come off its annual or CofA. One… Read more »

gobs
gobs
12 years ago

very strong confidence !

nubwaxer
nubwaxer
8 years ago

ha ha ha, today’s the 15th of august and flight controllers’ software update just grounded 400 flights.

Clarence Leonard Johnson
Clarence Leonard Johnson
6 years ago

Lol… Seen it multiple times. Just as a slight inaccuracy, in most modern airliners with fly by wire, if the software is messed up, chances are, the plane will crash on taxi. Either way, death. If you disembark, the plane (might – depending on the type of bug) make a 180 and crash into the terminal on taxi… death either way