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by pasabagi 849 days ago
> All electronics fail, and all systems reliant on electronics fail. Not all worm gears fail.

This is kind of a weird take: I was reading about the Therac 25 (radiation therapy machine that killed a few people because of software bugs), and one of the reasons why they were so confident it was going to work is that software isn't vulnerable to two classes of 'bugs' that analog devices suffer from: wear, and manufacturing defects.

I mean, they turned out to be wrong, but they have a point: physical devices are subject to entire categories of bugs that software can be reliably proofed against. All worm screws will ultimately fail, while software can (if done correctly) run forever. All manufactured devices are unique and have unique defects. Software can be reproduced without any defects whatsoever.
2 comments
Kbelicius 849 days ago
> physical devices are subject to entire categories of bugs that software can be reliably proofed against.

electronics != software

> All worm screws will ultimately fail, while software can (if done correctly) run forever.

You also need a machine to run that software forever.

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int_19h 849 days ago
Worm screws have a known and simple failure mode, however, which people understand. It can also take a very long time to fail depending on the design - longer than the useful life of the product in many cases.

Software fails suddenly and unexpectedly, and when it does, it's rarely clear how to mitigate it. Witness all the "turn it off and on again" jokes...

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pasabagi 849 days ago
Mechanical objects frequently fail unexpectedly, especially if you're trying to do something weird or unusual. We're just used to living in a world of machines that are in their second century of iterative improvement.

I make installation art, and from personal experience, despite being an equally shitty programmer as I am an engineer, the software is way more reliable, and there are way fewer ways in which it can fail. Anything from materials being not what they say they are, to some jackass accidentally making earth live, to stuff catching on fire - it's all possible.

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