* * * * *
                                        
              Debugging only gets harder with the passing of time
                                        
> The story resurfaced this week in connection with the Germanwings crash.
> The standard causes of plane crashes, as Steve Coast explained, have been
> largely eliminated by the imposition of sensible rules or engineering
> fixes. Windows no longer crack at the corners. Doors no longer blow out.
> What remains are the oblique, non-obvious problems. ‘As we find more rules
> to fix more things we are encountering tail events. We fixed all the main
> reasons aircraft crash a long time ago… So, we are left with the less and
> less probable events.’ The world’s problems will, in short, get weirder.
> The seemingly sensible fixes we now add to the rule book will now
> increasingly run into unintended consequences: you can install impenetrable
> cockpit doors on the assumption that they will protect pilots from
> terrorists, only to find that they also prevent the captain (and
> passengers) from regaining the cockpit.
> 

“Why plane crashes are getting weirder – and if we’re lucky, other problems
will too » The Spectator [1]”

I never thought of this, but it's obvious in hind-sight—all the easy problems
have been fixed and what we're left with is weird interactions that lead to
computer programs that occasionally crash only on Wednesdays [2].

[1] http://www.spectator.co.uk/life/the-wiki-man/9494122/why-plane-crashes-
[2] http://gyrovague.com/2015/07/29/crashes-

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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