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Author Topic: Worrisome State Of Software  (Read 5815 times)

LesPalenik

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Worrisome State Of Software
« on: October 13, 2017, 12:22:43 am »

This should go perhaps into the Rantatorial section, but I don't know if we are allowed to post there.

Anyway, not one day goes by that I don't encounter some software problem. On the quiet days my friends call me with their computer problems.

In my younger days, I made my living by designing and writing commercial and manufacturing software, starting on Phillips and Univac computers in mid seventies, and then transitioning to the microcomputers using initally 8" 300K floppies - even for mission critical applications.  Most of those programs were written in Cobol or some version of BASIC, they were simple, but they worked.

These days, I'm running into bugs and outages on all fronts. These programs were designed by large corporations that, one would think so, shouldn't be releasing buggy software.
Here is just a partial list: two of my banks, eBay, Paypal, ISP provider, Fine Art America, Shutterstock, my public library, and numerous other web sites. Tonight, I was trying to register for an event organized by my local Community Center, (actually had to call for advice a friend who managed to register for that event), spent almost an hour navigating their site and when I came to the checkout page, the program tried to double charge me and there was no way to remove the extra item from the shopping cart. The difference between my friend who managed to register successfuly and me, was that were different profiles - she was new to the system and I has already registered to another class previously.  That site doesn't even have a Help or Complaint option on their entire site. Tomorrow, I will have to call in and hopefuly able to register by phone.

One friend (university professor teaching software design and active in the computer field for 40 years) has just bought two new computers, one small for the road and one large for the office. Instead of buying some cheap hardware, he bought two premium-class Dell computers. The small one works flawlessly, the bigger one has network issues and aborts frequently. Dell support has been very polite (as all help desks are, but also ineffective like most help desks are), and for a week now, they have been unable to resolve the problem.
Another friend (not so knowlegeable about computers) keeps buying new computers because all his machines are very quickly slowing down and became practically unusable. In the last 6 years, he bought 8 computers, two smartphones and recently, he switched to using a mini iPad instead of the Windows and Chrome laptops. I have more similar stories, but you get the idea.

As I see it, the companies keep adding new features, push programmers to release the new software versions prematurely, instead of keeping things simple and reliable.
The frequent job turnovers don't help. Some of the programs (Windows, SAP, etc) are now so bloated that no one in those companies can possibly understand how the systems work, and they are just patching the programs and hoping it will work.

No wonder that the North Korean and Russian hackers can easily exploit so many programs all over the world and penetrate important systems and websites.
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AlterEgo

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2017, 12:36:44 am »

No wonder that the North Korean and Russian hackers can easily exploit so many programs all over the world and penetrate important systems and websites.

and why 'd you avoid NSA here ? get a mirror, dude...
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LesPalenik

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #2 on: October 13, 2017, 12:41:12 am »

If NAS software works as designed I don't have problems with that. My complain is about the programs that don't work.
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Ray

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #3 on: October 13, 2017, 01:45:39 am »

Les,
I agree completely, and I'm not a computer expert. When I accepted the free upgrade to Windows 8 some time ago (or was it Windows 10, can't remember), I waited until the free offer was close to expiry before accepting the upgrade, hoping that most of the bugs would be fixed.

After upgrading, I experienced so many problems and difficulties with my existing programs that I decided to revert to the Windows 7 Professional OS which I'd become accustomed to. Unfortunately, I left it too late to revert to a previous state with a few clicks, because I'd been away from my desktop, travelling, and the time limit for reversion to the previous operating system had expired. I had to reinstall my old Operating System from scratch and all the additional programs I use. What a bloody waste of my time.

The problem as I see it, is that in order to provide work for the thousands of computer programmers employed by the computer industries, new and so-called 'cool' features have to be continually designed and marketed, creating additional complexity and bugs.
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Farmer

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #4 on: October 13, 2017, 02:21:32 am »

It's always an interesting topic.

I have a custom built PC as a workstation and a high-spec Surface Book.  My wife has a medium spec HP laptop at the moment.  I also have an Android phone and a iPad and my wife has an Android tablet.

All work perfectly.  No slow downs, no issues at all.  The number of times I've had a serious issue with a computer I can count on one hand, and that's going back to Z-80 microprocessor machines in the 80s.  Pain-in-the-ass issues I've had a little more frequently, but nothing extraordinary.  My wife had a critical HDD failure on a previous Dell Laptop, but all the critical data was on Dropbox and our local NAS and Dell replaced and repaired the HDD for free even though it was outside of warranty.

There's no doubt lots of people have lots of problems and obviously various companies, websites, etc. have issues quite frequently, although those are also often created by users who don't pay attention (I'm not suggesting that's the case here with anyone).

What I don't do, and what I make sure my wife doesn't do, is click around to vague websites or on any cleaner software or indeed any software that I haven't specifically decided needs to be installed for a specific purpose and I keep proper, regular, backups both locally and via Crashplan, plus data in Dropbox and local NAS in addition to Crashplan.

I have a handful of very tech-literate friends.  Amongst us, we have a similar experience - almost never a problem and certainly the rate of problems has almost come to zero with more recent (last 10 years) hardware and operating systems.

Les' experience with the website double billing is a clear bug and I've certainly come across similar things at times.  But let's be honest, the level of testing possible compared to real-life use now is hugely disparate compared to the 70s or 80s, and to some extent even the early 90s (after which personal and business computing really went mainstream).  There's nothing like a few hundred thousand users to find a use-case you'd never even managed to contrive let alone seriously consider.  Then you have companies making changes to driver or other components upon which their software relies and this can cause issues.  Self-contained code running on static hardware with a select and expert user-base is pretty much a thing of not only the past, but of ancient history in computing terms.
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Phil Brown

LesPalenik

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #5 on: October 13, 2017, 04:29:45 am »

Quote
The number of times I've had a serious issue with a computer I can count on one hand, and that's going back to Z-80 microprocessor machines in the 80s.  Pain-in-the-ass issues I've had a little more frequently, but nothing extraordinary.  My wife had a critical HDD failure on a previous Dell Laptop, but all the critical data was on Dropbox and our local NAS and Dell replaced and repaired the HDD for free even though it was outside of warranty.

Phil, my experience is similar, I'm careful with clicking on various baits, and consequently don't experience too many problems with my own computer. The problems which I encounter quite frequently are due mainly to software bugs and poor programming standards of various websites, including companies, such as Microsoft, Yahoo and even some news agencies. The complexity of many layers of software, firmware and hardware make it indeed very difficult to test for all kinds of scenarios, and that's why I would prefer to see the software companies to simplify and optimize their programs, rather than to keep adding all kinds of useless bells and whistles.

I have encountered also all kinds of problems with various browsers and as a result I'm actually running Opera, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox concurrently on my computers, using each browser just for the tasks and sites which I know will work. As an example, until recently, I was using Opera to visit Fine Art America website and suddenly something has changed, either in Opera or on FAA site, causing some color shifts in the display of the images. Other sites displayed the same image correctly, and viewing the FAA site from another browser worked also correctly, so it was some incompatibility between the Opera browser and the FAA image display function. Fortunately, in this case the work-around is not difficult, but I have to run constantly at least 3 browsers to avoid certain problems.

Here is another example, this time from an entirely different industry.

I'm driving an old Dodge Caravan on which at one time the passenger power window stopped functioning. Since I'm driving mainly alone, I didn't worry too much about it, but a few months later, the same problem occured on the driver's side. When I took the van to the repair shop, they said that the computer system has to be reprogrammed. Curious about the reprogramming, I stayed around and was told that the reprogramming consists of disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. Next time, when the central door locking stopped working, I had a hunch that the "reprogramming" might work, tried it, and indeed it fixed the problem. A few years later, I had the same problem and disconnecting the battery worked again. Of course, this problem cause and fix are not mentioned anywhere in the car user manual, and could be that millions of car owners were forced to take their cars to the dealers and pay good money to get this problem fixed.

In the meantime, Google, Apple and many car companies are spending billions on the development of autonomous car driving. I like driving my car and having full control, so I have exactly zero interest in any such car, but would appreciate much more if the basic functions worked as advertised.                   
 
« Last Edit: October 13, 2017, 05:34:22 am by LesPalenik »
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David Sutton

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #6 on: October 13, 2017, 05:49:07 am »

Les I've been thinking along similar lines recently.
My desktop computer which I use for photo editing has Windows 7 and CS5 and it works fine. I always have a drive mirror handy in case I need to undo an update, but as long as I don't get sucked in by something newer and "improved", it's seldom necessary.
I went to Lightroom 6 recently so I could see the files from a Fuji XT-2. LR6 is buggy with two screens. I should have known. I thought about Photoshop CC but the software I rely on and understand (such as Nik) will eventually not work on it, and any "improvements" are not worth losing what I have now.
My business laptop runs Windows 8. Fine if you want a tablet, but worse than 7 for my purposes. It took a week to get it to function reliably and as fast as Windows 7 for simple business needs.
I also tried the update to Windows 10. That lasted a day before I got out the drive with the disk mirror and went back to what I had.   
Sometimes change is better, and I understand the difficulties of making this stuff work across a range of hardware, but I've come to the conclusion in my photo work that new software is now mostly for the sake of new bells and whistles and it won't make me a better photographer or improve my business.
I have a friend who just got a new laptop for business use. She never connects it to the internet. It will undoubtedly work beautifully as long as the hardware lasts.
David
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mbaginy

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #7 on: October 13, 2017, 06:42:59 am »

In the meantime, Google, Apple and many car companies are spending billions on the development of autonomous car driving. I like driving my car and having full control, so I have exactly zero interest in any such car, but would appreciate much more if the basic functions worked as advertised.                   
My prediction is that our cars will encounter more software problems in the future.  So many functions are being controlled digitally and will also be available via wifi.  This will increase the danger of tampering by third parties as well as recording data by insurance companies, police, auto manufacturers, service stations, etc.  It all functions great on paper and in a perfect world, but a main cause of auto malfunctions can be traced to software & electronic issues.  I’ve worked in the automobile industry for over 30 years and I see many problems daily.  I fear the future of automobiles – the more digitalized they become, the more fault prone they will become as well.

My computers haven’t given me headaches for many years now.  A few oddities (such as LR printing), but I’ve learned to operate with workarounds.
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Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #8 on: October 13, 2017, 09:11:43 am »

I've been on WinOS ever since it was first introduced and cannot remember anytime I've had OS issues.  I did not allow any of our three home PCs (2 Win7 and one Win8) to upgrade to Win10 as I did not see the need and one of the PCs runs Windows Media Center which Win10 does not support.  Other than certain Adobe products which have been well documented on LuLa, most workstation software releases seem to be pretty much bug free in my experience.  Yes, sometimes there are occasional glitches with some commercial websites use for selling various products but my recent experience has been excellent in that regard.

There are issues with Android phone Apps.  I was using a really nice one that raises money for charity when you are out walking/running.  GPS measures distance, records it and donates the sponsor donated money to the charity.  Unfortunately, when Google updated the OS to Oreo in early September it broke the App.  Lots of us posted on the Google Play Store site and sent emails to the App developer but it still has not been fixed nor have emails been answered.  there have been similar problems with other Apps but most of the major corporation Apps are regularly updated and patched quickly if necessary.  I hardly ever visit the bank these days, doing all my transactions over either my PC or phone App.
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JNB_Rare

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #9 on: October 13, 2017, 09:21:01 am »

There are days when I'm amazed that thousands of lines of code, laid on thousands of lines of old code, or code written by thousands of different programmers, works at all. But, when it doesn't, I say "#$@&^?!!!" like everyone else.
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RSL

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #10 on: October 13, 2017, 11:25:13 am »

I did software engineering for thirty years and I can tell you there's no way a large program can avoid bugs. According to IBM the original IBM 360 operating system had about 5000 errors (bugs) in it. After it was revised there still were about 5000 errors but they were different errors. Maybe someday. . .
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LesPalenik

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #11 on: October 13, 2017, 09:28:26 pm »

I did software engineering for thirty years and I can tell you there's no way a large program can avoid bugs. According to IBM the original IBM 360 operating system had about 5000 errors (bugs) in it. After it was revised there still were about 5000 errors but they were different errors. Maybe someday. . .

Speaking about IBM and 5,000 bugs. - it depends on what kind of programmers you have and how motivated they are.

In 1968, there was the widely cited IBM study by Sackman, Erikson, and Grant which concluded that the ratio of initial coding time between the best and worst programmers was about 20 to 1; the ratio of debugging times over 25 to 1; of program size 5 to 1; and of program execution speed about 10 to 1. In years since the original study, the general finding that "There are order-of-magnitude differences among programmers" has been confirmed by many other studies of professional programmers (Curtis 1981, Mills 1983, DeMarco and Lister 1985, Curtis et al. 1986, Card 1987, Boehm and Papaccio 1988, Valett and McGarry 1989, Boehm et al 2000)...

A mediocre programmer can have a very low productivity with a great number of bugs. On the other hand, a great programmer can produce error-free programs and in a much shorter time than an average programmer. Plus, he can do things that poor and average programmers would simply never achieve, regardless of how much time you gave them.

According to Jones, there are 20 factors that can influence the quality and productivity of a programming project:
Programming language used, Program size, Experience of programmers and designers, Novelty of requirements, Complexity of program and data, Use of structured programming methods, Program class or the distribution method, Program type, Tools and environmental conditions, Enhancing existing programs, Maintaining existing programs, Reusing existing modules and standard designs, Program generators, Fourth-generation languages, Geographic separation of development locations, Defect potentials and removal methods, Existing Documentation, Prototyping before main development, Project team structures, and finally the Morale and compensation of staff

Compounding effect of all these factors can be significantly greater than the often quoted 10X factor.

https://www.ybrikman.com/writing/2013/09/29/the-10x-developer-is-not-myth/

Unfortunately, in the real world, there are not enough great programmers, but plenty of mediocre ones. Some of them doing the work for my local community centre.

 
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #12 on: October 14, 2017, 04:15:20 am »

I did software engineering for thirty years and I can tell you there's no way a large program can avoid bugs. According to IBM the original IBM 360 operating system had about 5000 errors (bugs) in it. After it was revised there still were about 5000 errors but they were different errors. Maybe someday. . .

There's a pair of maxims I learned many years ago, when I used to do rather more programming than I do now.

1. All non-trivial programs have at least one bug.
2. It is a sufficient condition for program triviality that it have no bugs.

Jeremy
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Tony Jay

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #13 on: October 14, 2017, 05:24:46 am »

There's a pair of maxims I learned many years ago, when I used to do rather more programming than I do now.

1. All non-trivial programs have at least one bug.
2. It is a sufficient condition for program triviality that it have no bugs.

Jeremy
Large software projects represent the largest and most challenging engineering projects yet known to man.
As to errors, well, it would be impossible for there not to be bugs...
Even a large civil engineering project is rather simple by comparison - and we all know what can and has gone wrong with those...

Tony Jay
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LesPalenik

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #14 on: October 14, 2017, 06:47:43 am »

In the mission critical projects you aim for zero defects, and when you find some, you fix them ASAP. It is crucial to detect the problems as early as possible and fix them immediately, since the cost of corrections goes up with time. Or if any hazard or damage occurs, the software must be able to take corrective action. 

Software bugs affect airplanes, cars, medical instruments and nuclear power generating stations. Or a rocket to the Moon. You can't just brush it off and accept that all large programs are bound to contain a few thousands errors. The automotive industry software uses short-range wireless connections, all kinds of sensors and radars, image processing and artificial intelligence. All these elements must communicate with each other and even with external systems, so the complexity is now mind-boggling. In the airspace industry, amount of software in Boeing 787 is now 8-10 times greater than in the 777 version.
 
Back to my original post.
When I called the community centre and asked them to register me manually for that aforementioned event, their first reaction was that I should register online. They were not even aware of the double-charging bug. After I described the problem, they were kind enough to do the registration from their end and create a maintenance request for their programming team to correct the problem. Total time spent on this workaround - 15 minutes.

My friend with a problematic Dell laptop was not as lucky. He spent 20-25 hours troubleshooting the problem on his own and also with the Dell support team. Not counting the time, logged by the Dell team. Dell support took remotely control of his computer but they were unable to diagnose the problem. Finally, after a whole week of troubleshooting when everything else failed, they decided to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows 10. That fixed the problem. Now my friend is busy reinstalling all the programs which were lost and estimates a cost of $3,000 (at $100 per hour) for his time lost on troubleshooting (not counting the lost productivity resulting from not being able to use the computer).
That explains it perhaps why my other less technically oriented friend finds it more cost effective to buy another computer rather than to go through a troubleshooting process.  :(
   
I gather that Phil and a few other computer experts would be able to prevent or solve such problems on their own, but that is not the scenario Bill Gates had in mind 30 years ago when he envisioned a computer on every desk.
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RSL

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #15 on: October 14, 2017, 12:40:49 pm »

In 1968, there was the widely cited IBM study by Sackman, Erikson, and Grant which concluded that the ratio of initial coding time between the best and worst programmers was about 20 to 1

Yeah, I'm familiar with that study, Les. I also taught the C programming language for a while at Colorado Tech. The thing I discovered early on is that programming is like music. You're either born with it or you aren't. If you aren't, you should find another line of work. I ought to add that two of my sons and at least one of my grandsons were born with it, so I suspect there's an hereditary factor involved.
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Jeremy Roussak

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #16 on: October 14, 2017, 12:52:04 pm »

I also taught the C programming language for a while at Colorado Tech.

C remains my favourite programming language. I wish K&R had kept "break" distinct from "endcase", though, as it is in BCPL.

Jeremy
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BobDavid

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #17 on: October 14, 2017, 01:26:21 pm »

it's a good idea to use malware/virus detection software and an ad blocker on Windows machines. Norton, Mcafee, and Kaspersky are resource hogs. There are some well-regarded freeware options such as Avast for ad blocking and Malwarebytes for viruses. On my workstation,  I prefer linking the wifi transceiver to an ethernet hub. I also backup an "image" of the OS, user data, and applications. I try to do that on a monthly basis. I minimize the amount of time the workstation is online. Knock on wood, those practises will continue to keep my principle machine up and running. It's running on Windows 64 Pro.

My NAS is plugged into the ethernet hub only when my workstation is offline. I only use it for storing photos and  miscellaneous documents. I use portable drives for redundant backups.

It's important to be "streetwise" regarding scams, intruders, phishing operations, etc. Beware of clickbate on social media sites. ... My Surface 3 is my go to machine for surfing and email. On a daily basis Windows 10 nags me to udpate my account to enable access to a host of MS offerings of which I believe are intrusive. I simply ignore those requests.

Google, FB, MS, Apple and others are becoming more entrenched in our daily lives. The amount of data collected on users is staggering. I think it's a good idea to be mindful of that.
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Farmer

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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #18 on: October 14, 2017, 05:02:16 pm »

I gather that Phil and a few other computer experts would be able to prevent or solve such problems on their own, but that is not the scenario Bill Gates had in mind 30 years ago when he envisioned a computer on every desk.

There's no way anyone can overcome a problem on a website, of course.  But in terms of computers running properly, the big difference is that many average users click anything and everything and install the most amazing amount of junk - and more concerning they do it deliberately.  It's like a non-mechanic randomly buying shiny things for their car and attaching them and then wondering why there is a problem :-)

The best advice I have ever given anyone is to never install something unless they have made a conscious decision they needed a certain piece of software and then they made sure they understood what it did and could explain why they needed it, and ideally they then checked with someone who was technical (be if a friend, a colleague, or a paid consultant).  Much cheaper to get $100- worth of advice than to lose $3,000- in lost labour, for example.

This is where Apple has an advantage.  The system, for average users, is very locked down.  Advanced users can access any manner of things, but it's much harder for average users.  On Windows, it's just that little bit easier for average users to get wider access and therefore do some damage unless it's in a corporate environment where the MIS team has put in place proper policies / schema to lock things down.  And that, of course, is exactly why most companies lock things down.  It's not to protect against external hackers or the like - it's to protect against users, and rightly so.

And I do understand the sentiment and position of non-technical people.  Two cases from my own history (well, specifically my wife), is one an Android tablet that she hadn't updated for so long that it seemingly wouldn't boot up - she was ready to just but another one until I simply plugged it into power and left it alone for several hours to sort itself out.  To her, it was constantly failing and so she kept switching it off and back on and had no concept (nor any particular reason) to understand that it just needed time and every time she switched it off the reset the requirement.  More recently (as in Friday night), she managed to break the power cable to her laptop by getting it caught in the mechanism of one of our powered recliner lounges.  Saturday morning she was in a panic upon discovery because she's about half-way through the last subject of her Master's degree and there's an assignment due by midnight Monday, and ordering a replacement from HP isn't going to arrive in time.  The very thought of going to a local store and asking for something that will help (I was thinking one of the universal laptop power supplies with the dozen or so connectors and multiple power settings) was sending her into more of a panic (I was heading out to the races with friends from work for the day and wasn't going to be around to help).  To her, highly educated, successful, resourceful, capable in most other respects, this was actually frightening for her.  Anyway, with enough power in the laptop to email the required files to her work address she was able to use her work laptop (which is locked down and can't access her Dropbox folders) since it's just Word documents.  Today (Sunday) I'll help her to get a replacement power supply.  Of course, I had many other alternatives available - my main workstation or my Surface Book, but she was more comfortable using a computer that she was familiar with (whereas I would hardly care for using Word).

So for non-technical people, yeah, it's a big deal - and that's why I give the advice I do, along with "don't panic" and "see a professional" (just as you might if you had a plumbing or electrical issue).
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Re: Worrisome State Of Software
« Reply #19 on: October 14, 2017, 05:20:24 pm »

In the mission critical projects you aim for zero defects, and when you find some, you fix them ASAP. It is crucial to detect the problems as early as possible and fix them immediately, since the cost of corrections goes up with time. Or if any hazard or damage occurs, the software must be able to take corrective action. 

Software bugs affect airplanes, cars, medical instruments and nuclear power generating stations. Or a rocket to the Moon. You can't just brush it off and accept that all large programs are bound to contain a few thousands errors. The automotive industry software uses short-range wireless connections, all kinds of sensors and radars, image processing and artificial intelligence. All these elements must communicate with each other and even with external systems, so the complexity is now mind-boggling. In the airspace industry, amount of software in Boeing 787 is now 8-10 times greater than in the 777 version.
 
Back to my original post.
When I called the community centre and asked them to register me manually for that aforementioned event, their first reaction was that I should register online. They were not even aware of the double-charging bug. After I described the problem, they were kind enough to do the registration from their end and create a maintenance request for their programming team to correct the problem. Total time spent on this workaround - 15 minutes.

My friend with a problematic Dell laptop was not as lucky. He spent 20-25 hours troubleshooting the problem on his own and also with the Dell support team. Not counting the time, logged by the Dell team. Dell support took remotely control of his computer but they were unable to diagnose the problem. Finally, after a whole week of troubleshooting when everything else failed, they decided to reformat the disk and reinstall Windows 10. That fixed the problem. Now my friend is busy reinstalling all the programs which were lost and estimates a cost of $3,000 (at $100 per hour) for his time lost on troubleshooting (not counting the lost productivity resulting from not being able to use the computer).
That explains it perhaps why my other less technically oriented friend finds it more cost effective to buy another computer rather than to go through a troubleshooting process.  :(
   
I gather that Phil and a few other computer experts would be able to prevent or solve such problems on their own, but that is not the scenario Bill Gates had in mind 30 years ago when he envisioned a computer on every desk.
Nobody brushes errors off.

However, in a codebase of 10 000 000 lines of code even finding an offending error can be a challenge.
Many of the best minds on the planet are trying to come up with ways to write error-free software - and some initiatives are paying dividends - however, as a goal it is still an elusive one.

Also, it is true that some software - air traffic control software, comes to mind - needs to be essentially bug-free, and that has been largely achieved.
However the costs are astronomical and the length of time it takes to get a project to commercial release is very long.

To achieve that kind of perfection for Lightroom for example would probably make each license cost $10 000 and we would still be on version 1.

The original pioneers in software engineering were accomplished mathematicians (I am talking about Alan Turing and his associates). The computers they used could only be manipulated with a handful of instructions at the machine level (this has not changed much in the modern era). Yet, with all their mathematical and logical genius and the small instruction set they had at their disposal with which to program, and the fact that they were programming in the miniature (compared to the size of today's projects) they made errors - lots of them - and finding and eliminating those errors (bugs) proved far harder than any of them anticipated!

Writing non-trivial software has always been a challenge right on the edge of human capability. The discipline of software engineering is also a mere pup when compared to other engineering domains, and so, the least mature engineering discipline is responsible for the most complex and challenging engineering projects attempted by mankind.

Tony Jay
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