Worst Computer Bugs in History: Therac-25 (2017)
As terrible as it was, that Therac-25 remains one of the most frequently cited examples of software engineering flaws hurting people is somewhat encouraging for the profession. 3 deaths is a tragedy, but the Hyatt bridge collapse a year earlier was a couple of orders of magnitude worse (114 people, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collapse" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Hyatt_Regency_walkway_collap...</a>) from what was also a fairly subtle engineering failure.<p>IMO, harm from software bugs (so far) have been vastly surpassed by explicit choices in system design. The various emission cheat scandals have almost certainly taken a real toll on human life going into the hundreds of person lives. More subtly, the choices to retain data inappropriately at Ashley Madison (probably) lead directly to suicides and serious emotional harm. Those are just the two recent examples that spring to mind as a practocing developer, not an ethicist.<p>To somewhat over simplify but when discussing engineering ethics, the harm from software developers building things wrong is swamped by building the wrong things.