The person they responded to refers specifically to "healthcare, finance, automotive, defense, power plans, aviation, manufacturing", areas where I'd at least hope that we aspire to understand what the code does.

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leonidasrup 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Also software like SQLite:

" SQLite is built using a DO-178B-inspired process. The testing standards for SQLite are among the highest for commercial software.

SQLite is open-source but it is not open-contribution. All the code in SQLite is written by a small team of experts. The project does not accept "pull requests" or patches from anonymous passers-by on the internet. "

https://sqlite.org/hirely.html

https://sqlite.org/testing.html

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kabes 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Having worked in software for healthcare, defense and finance I guarantee you we don't

	▲	boomlinde an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Do you agree that this isn't a desirable state of affairs?

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Maxatar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I worked briefly in heath care and the code is so brittle and so poorly understood that almost everyone is afraid to touch anything and instead it's just layers and layers of stuff trying to patch around existing code.

	▲	yetihehe an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I worked briefly in aviation and the part I've seen was very understandable and easy to extend and modify in understandable way. Some parts were hard, but by necessity. We also had very good tests. But maybe that one software was just a good exception.
	▲	mwwaters an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I know this is true. But I don’t think “Some parts of important codebases are black boxes. Therefore it’s fine if all of that code base becomes a far bigger black box” sounds like a good argument. Also, there was probably some human at some point that had some understanding of what they were trying to do and why. The black boxes generally get programmed around after they long left but at the time they had bugs ironed out over decades. (Yes I know sometimes true slop is done over a short period of time and the programmer leaves. But I’ve generally seen the black box built over decades instead).

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ponector 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I worked for a reinsurance company and their main pricing tool is a huge brittle excel file full of spaghetti VBS code. And yet, they manage to underwrite billions.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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