Broken image link for me π
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
1135 points (99.2% liked)
Programmer Humor
22113 readers
1054 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I was able to pull out what used to be there:
Thank you!
I refuse to enter any club that would accept me as a member.
-Groucho Marx
Thanks for doing what I was too lazy to do.
This was exactly what came to mind when I read the post.
Reminds me of a joke:
The faculty of the engineering department at a university are gifted a free vacation retreat. Once everyone is in their seats on the plane, the captain announces that the very plane they're sitting in was designed and built by their own students.
Chaos breaks out as the passengers scramble for the exits, until only one professor remains, calmly and confidently poised in his seat.
Naturally, he is asked why he didn't panic like his colleagues. With a knowing smile he replies "I know the abilities of my students, I've seen what they're capable of accomplishing when they apply themselves. I can assure you this piece of shit will never start."
If anyone is s curious, I work in that industry, and that is why it is so regulated. A lot of things have to go wrong for any single personβs mistake to matter. We test the heck out of aircraft. Some of these tests are absurd, but theyβre meant to prove that the code still works even if the plane flies through the twilight zone.
I also work in the industry and yet you've got a company that didn't follow the rules of redundancy, locked a normally required safety critical architecture and software of using redundant sensor behind paid DLC and caused two fatal crashes.
βI wouldn't want to belong to a club that would have me as a memberβ
load more comments
(4 replies)
"Software for airplanes" is a broad term. If I ever get into a position to make software for airplanes, it's probably not going to be things that can crash the plane. The entertainment system is still software for airplanes.
Swissair Flight 111 was possibly crashed by its entertainment system. Nothing to do with the software though.
If I recall correctly, it was installed questionably, drew too much power and caused a fire.
That was the wiring and circuit breakers, not the software.
(Also flammable material)
Edit: yes, not software related.
load more comments
(1 replies)
People in the past have used the entertainment bus to get into the flight telemetry data, hopefully only in a read-only state, but that will only be true if you trust the competence of the IT group that set up the programming for the switches.
Just be careful of where you try to write data and you should be fine! (and stay away from /dev/wing0 and /dev/wing1 on the network mount!)
Ugh, why the hell aren't those air-gapped?
Same thing in cars. Why is the infotainment system that is connected to the internet not air-gapped from the critical car functions?
These things aren't hard to do. I guess we just need people to die before we take such basic safety measures.
dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/eng0
Oops!
Use /dev/random for chaos
You're right. The other side of that is I did a little contract work for a company that is working on software for unmanned commercial flights.
Those guys actually made me feel better. They were all super smart, meticulous, and incredibly good at their jobs. It was the first environment I've ever been in where I felt like I could just barely keep up. I always felt one commit away from fucking things up. So I moseyed on down the road as soon as the thing I was contracted for was finished.
It was such a cool job and they offered me a permanent place. I just couldn't feel behind every single day for the rest of my career until my system destroyed people's lives.
I didn't work on the FCC software, I wrote software to test the assembled FCC box, but the feeling was... Similar. I think it was a Moog product that went in an Embraer or the Chinese C919.
I had 150+ connectors, and they had to provide me values to send to every one of them, and then what to measure on every single output to make sure that there were no shorts, no opens, and no damage to a single component inside of it.
I had an interview to work on the platform of a weapon system, obviously would require clearance. I got the job. I went down to check out living possibilities, and while I was there, Saudis had bombed a bus full of kids. I figured out that I'd be working on and air to air missile, but the mere thought that I'd be attached to something delivering death sent me into a panick attack that forced me to decline the job. I now work on healthcare systems. It's a fuckload nicer knowing I'm making people's lives easier and and saving lives rather than risking them.
load more comments
(3 replies)
i read that Boeing paid developers in India less than $5/hr for the 737 MAX software
This is the type of peak capitalism that make me lose all faith in humanity. The fact American companies feel pressure to pay even less than the already poor salaries is testament to the need to burn this all to the ground.
As far as I know, the MAX software fully complied with its software requirements. The problem was crappy system requirements, and Boeing actively lied to their pilots to conceal that they added a brand new automatic flight control system that can push the elevators down independent of the autopilot and stick pusher.
That last part is what sent people to jail.
Specifically, the 'for test flight use only' software that wasn't removed after test flight.
Don't worry, we'll refactor when we get time!
That's shit even by Indian standards.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Having worked in this industry for going on 25 years, I long ago learned that there are way too many incompetent programmers in the world working critical jobs. It's best not to think about it.
Judge any service (and most other stuff) by its support, aftercare and how they handle complaints / fix problems.
That's worth more than flashy front end, marketing bs or even technical performance specs.
Yep. When buying a product, it ain't about the packaging, color of the paint, or the sticker/badge hung on it. It's all about the service when things go sideways. And at some point something will go wrong, it always does. That's when you learn just how good or bad a company is.
Donβt worry OP, they let me be an air traffic controller and my best mate an airline pilot.
Bad software or not, youβre fucked anyway.
These things should never come down to the individual skill of the programmer. There should be systems and checks in place to assure the quality. And if the quality isn't reached, the programmer needs enough time and support to reach them.
But we all know, being thorough doesn't pay.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I'd say 'Imposter Syndrome' + 'Past Job Position Trauma'. There should be good review process and good pipeline with automatic testing and static code analysis, it shouldn't be a responsibility of a single person.
this makes me think of the dilbert where the lazy guy talks about reusing code from payroll on this project for airline software and warns his workmates to not fly on payday.
Don't they use super statically verifiable code for these kinds of applications? Like, Ada?
Ada is a language that leaves a lot of things "implementation dependent" as it's not supposed to grant easy access to underlying data types like those you'll find in C, or literally on the silicon. You're supposed to be able to declare your own integer type of any size and the compiler is supposed to figure it out. If it chooses to use a native data type, then so be it.
This doesn't guarantee the correctness of the compiler nor the programmer who absolutely has to work with native types because it's an embedded system though.
This has ended in disaster at least once: https://itsfoss.com/a-floating-point-error-that-caused-a-damage-worth-half-a-billion/
That is why I travel by train. At least a train can't fall out of the sky.
Not with that attitude.
More of an altitude issue tbh
That's why we invented bridges and viaducts, we didn't want the trains to feel left out
Hundreds of tons of steel detailing doesn't feel good. Also don't look at the rate of train derailments.
Derailments arent just flying off the rails and destroying a town, it could just be a misalignment
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next βΊ