Designing Safe Software Systems Part 2

[bearophile]

Walter Bright:

> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a4abb/designing_safe_software_systems_part_2/

Biological systems, like your Achilles tendon or your kidneys, work in another way, they are usually made of many small parts, and usually their performance degrades gracefully, trying to avoid catastrophic shut-downs.
For example usually a large tendon rips itself progressively, and such ripping adsorbs lot of energy, hopefully enough to keep some tendon left. Then if a little amount of tendon is left, new tendon can grow along it, using it as scaffolding.
The language areas of your brain, when they get old, produce words slowly or partially wrongly, but they usually don't stop talking.

Bye,
bearophile