8.10b - first impression and questions

[Billie Erin Walsh]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Knapp wrote:
>> What is not perfect on the 
>> home systems is often the hardware and other peoples software that it
>> must interface with anyway. When you release a piece of software it
>> must not work with just one type of hardware but 1000s! It is really
>> impossible to test 1000s of possible hardware types that you might
>> have your software run on and it is not cost effective ether. Zero
>> fault software is the sort of stuff that NASA uses.
>>     
>  
> Like the lander software for Mars missions :-)
>
> You're essentially right, I just can't agree that there's much perfect
> sotware out there.
>   

 From one Discovery show I watched it was more of an error in thought 
process for writing the software than an actual software problem. It 
seems that someone thought it would be better if the lander rockets 
pulsed rather than firing continuously. The pulse firing required by the 
software, even when working perfectly, led to instability in the lander 
that caused them to crash. When they rewrote the software to fire 
continuously the lander landed perfectly [ the last mission to the pole 
]. You can't really blame the software or the person that wrote it. The 
blame falls on the engineers and mission planners that wrote the 
requirements for the software.