Originally Posted by
HazelNuts39
For one not familiar with COMPUTERGEEKSPEAK, it would seem that that statement is open to question.
Indeed, which is the reason I book-ended that section in my post - I'll do my best to elaborate.
At code level, a syntactic error is one in which the rules of the programming language itself are violated, thus causing the program to stop running. When a program is compiled into object and machine language, these errors are usually flagged, halting compilation and resulting in no working output. A code level logical error is one in which the syntax is correct, but the code's behaviour deviates from the specification and design.
The issue you raise from the ATSB report on QF32 [EDIT : corrected from QF72 - my bad] falls into the category of spec/design-level errors, as I said:
...assumptions made at the design level ... which turned out to be either incorrect or incomplete...
in which the code implements the specification and/or design correctly, but the spec or design itself (signed off by the aero engineers and pilot engineers - not just the software engineers) was at fault.
This is a very important distinction to make from my perspective - because strictly speaking this is not a "computer" or "software" error at all, but an engineering problem. Not that the media will hesitate to report it as a "computer error", which, needless to say, grinds my gears in much the same way as yours when you read a sentence like "the wing flaps which help the aircraft land".