Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 pilots 'could not stop nosedive'
There you have it, folks, programmers killing people. No, it wasn&#x27;t on-purpose, but that doesn&#x27;t mean it didn&#x27;t happen.<p>This, of course, has been happening for a long time, it&#x27;s just getting more and more obvious now. I feel strongly that AF 447 was an example.<p>It&#x27;s important to understand that this is the natural result of two trends. One, software&#x2F;hardware systems continue to become more and more complex, many times leading to unforeseen interactions. Two, programmers and programming management teams love to bunch up the work by things not related to the end-users: hardware component, new modules, architectural tier, underlying technology involved.<p>It doesn&#x27;t take very much of that at all before you have a whole bunch of people all doing work of various quality in small enough isolated silos such that everybody can do a wonderful job -- and the system still kill people.<p>There&#x27;s a lot more to add here. It&#x27;s nothing new, and there are a ton of ways we&#x27;ve tried to fix this. My belief is that we&#x27;ve failed because we don&#x27;t understand exactly what goes into making successful software at scale. I am quite concerned about it and I have been writing on this topic for several years. If you&#x27;re interested in more, see my profile.