Originally Posted by
syseng68k
What is clear is a gross failure of systems engineering. Design, attention to detail and oversight. The big picture view of how the overall system works and how the individual parts interact and communicate. I don’t think you can blame software engineers or the software for any of this, as faults vs spec at that level would have been found during rigorous testing, but if the fundamental design is wrong, or full of uncovered corner cases, no software can compensate for that. The problem is that modern systems are now so complex that it may in fact be nigh impossible to test for every possible situation, or component failure. However, that is no excuse for not trying.
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It's always the same story:
a) System engineering (writing system requirements and designing a 'system' before jumping on code and PCBs) is completely underestimated but failures at this stage have a huge impact.
b) People care about 'functional safety' (bugs) but completely underestimate the importance of 'safety of use', a clear and understandable user interface, also in automotive (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Yelchin#Lawsuit)
c) Complexity, which everyone claimes. But: High complexity in most cases is just bad (or missing) architecture.
Sorry, but the longer I think about this MCAS, the more I get angry that such a system was able to make it's way into production.