Jimmy on Software

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In 1999, NASA's $300 million Mars Climate Orbiter program was lost due to a type error. How does a type error destroy a spacecraft?

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56s

The tech lead says this code is a problem. The engineer says it's fine. It's only ever called right before the benchmark runs. Same code. Why can't they agree? From my essay "The Three Levels of Software": www.pathsensitive.com/2018/01/the-...

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This code has never failed. Run it all you like, you never see a bug. It's still wrong. How? Based on "The Three Levels of Software," www.pathsensitive.com/2018/01/the-...

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There are two ways to write bad tests. Most programmers only know one. Test too little, and you miss bugs. But how can a test check too much? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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An engineer on my team needed one function from a file in another project. But importing that file would drag in everything else in it too. What could they do? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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Want to know what a program can do? Don't look at what it does. You can tell what a kitchen can make without reading a single recipe. So what do you look at? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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Here's a paradox: why are more senior engineers willing to leave more code messy? Is there a deeper wisdom? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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You are using software right now that has a flaw that will never be fixed In the early '90s, the people writing the HTTP standard misspelled "referrer". Now your browser still sends that typo almost every time you visit a web page. Not even an AI can fix it. Come learn why.

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Moving messy code into its own function makes it look cleaner. But is that actually refactoring? Or just boxing? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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Imagine a microwave that checks you didn't type a negative number. Or that it isn't causing a nuclear reaction. Absurd, right? Yet a lot of code does something morally similar. Why is checking errors bad? From my booklet "7 Mistakes That Cause Fragile Code": www.mirdin.com/7-mistakes

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The junior said two days. It took a month. The senior said two weeks. It took two weeks. The ninja said an hour. It took an hour. How? Music: "Ishikari Lore" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), CC BY 4.0

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Windows had code that checks if you're playing SimCity. SimCity freed memory, then kept using it. That worked on Windows 3 but crashed on Windows 95, so Microsoft gave it a special case. Was that a bug in SimCity? From my essay: www.pathsensitive.com/2018/01/the-...

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