/u/im-ba explains how badly written software caused the Boeing MAX crashes

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1csgt9p/boeing_may_face_criminal_prosecution_over_737_max/l45ja6g/

created by eightfold on 15/05/2024 at 15:54 UTC

137 upvotes, 3 top-level comments (showing 3)

Comments

Comment by wastedcleverusername at 16/05/2024 at 00:05 UTC

133 upvotes, 4 direct replies

Not a software problem. The software was written to spec and it worked as intended. The problem was what Boeing intended was wrong. There was even a version which did take into account multiple AoA sensor readings and would attempt to reconcile them - it could've been included in every aircraft at zero marginal cost, but Boeing sold as an "upgrade" instead.

If there's one thing I'd like people to take away from catastrophic incidents like these, it's that they're rarely because a single thing went wrong. In pretty much every incident report you will read, there will be multiple things that went wrong and multiple opportunities upstream to have averted it. Boeing's ongoing issues aren't because somebody made an oopsie somewhere, they're because Boeing is failing as an engineering institution.

Comment by masklinn at 15/05/2024 at 20:15 UTC

45 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Not badly written software. Badly and wrongly designed *system*.

The best software in the world can’t use data you did not collect, computers are GIGO systems: if you put garbage in, you will only get garbage out.

Comment by watabby at 16/05/2024 at 00:50 UTC

8 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Can somebody explain to me what this has to do with the MAXs way of handling takeoffs because they are lower to the ground?

I originally heard that the controls were programmed in such a way that didn’t require retraining pilots because some of the controls were developed to handle just like the former versions of the 737 but had a different angle for take off.

I hope I’m making sense here in my question