Everyone who writes safety critical software should read this

[Nick Sabalausky]

On 10/30/2013 5:18 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 10/30/2013 11:01 AM, Chris wrote:
>> "Poorly designed firmware caused unintended operation, lack of driver
>>  training made it fatal."
>> So it's the driver's fault, who couldn't possibly know what was going on
>> in that car-gone-mad? To put the blame on the driver is cynicism of
>> the worst kind.
>> Unfortunately, that's a common (and dangerous) attitude I've come across
>> among programmers and engineers.
>
> There are also misguided end users who believe there cannot be any other
> way (and sometimes even believe that the big players in the industry are
> infallible, and hence the user is to blame for any failure).
>

I have a deep hatred for such people. (I've come across far too many.)

>> The user has to adapt to anything they
>> fail to implement or didn't think of. However, machines have to adapt to
>> humans not the other way around (realizing this was part of Apple's
>> success in UI design,
>
> AFAIK Apple designs are not meant to be adapted. It seems to be mostly
> marketing.
>

This is very true (at least for Apple's "Return of Jobs" era). And it's 
not surprising: Steve Jobs had a notoriously heavy hand in Apple's 
designs and yet Jobs himself has never, realistically, been much of 
anything more than a glorified salesman. The company was literally being 
run by a salesman. And that easily explains both the popularity and the 
prevalence of bad design.

>> Ubuntu is very good now too).
>
> The distribution is not really indicative of the UI/window manager
> you'll end up using, so what do you mean?

Ordinarily, yes, but I would think there'd be an uncommonly strong 
correlation between Ubuntu users and Unity users.