[bumby]

I suppose it depends on the field in which you work, but many safety-critical fields have an expectation that hardware failures are captured and mitigated and there are various tools to capture these design decisions and ensure they are tested. One example tool in this case would be a software fault analysis (FTA) or failure-mode-effects analysis (FMEA) that looks at a broken sensor input value as a failure mode.[1]

It's been my experience, however, that these sorts of design tools are more unfamiliar to software groups than hardware bubbas. It's not uncommon to simply see "software fails" as a failure mode which isn't very helpful. I'd be curious what the HN community's experience is with software as it relates to design tools like FTAs, FMEAs, hazard analyses, etc.

[1] https://standards.nasa.gov/standard/nasa/nasa-gb-871913