The '90s: a series of mistakes
In 1994, the torch of "program errors" was taken up by Intel company. Professor Thomas Nicely of Lynchburg College in Virginia found out about the malfunctioning of the new processor named Pentium. Here's a really foreign eye and grain of sand. The fact is that the processor malfunctioned only under very specific conditions during floating point operations, and most ordinary users would never have faced this problem at all.
However, Intel's management accepted this information, which is called, to the heart of the matter. Marketing Director Richard Dracott explained this by the fact that the presence of bugs can have a negative impact on the image of the brand of Pentium processors on the market. As a result, Intel has committed itself to replacing the processors with new samples whose control code did not contain bugs. All this cost the company a lot of money (something about 450 million dollars), and Intel has since published lists of detected errors for all its chips.
The next trouble connected with errors in the software happened in 1995. This time, because of programmers, a new... airport was not opened in time! But about everything in order. In 1995, the city of Denver was to open an international airport, which the press enthusiastically called the "airport of the XXI century". The cargo handling system envisaged by the project was amazing: the reception, shipment and sorting of luggage had to be done automatically, almost without human intervention. Alas, during the tests it turned out that robotic trolleys collide with walls, and cargoes are sorted far from the way the developers would like them to.
The reason is the errors in the software used to control the system. As a result, the airport was opened 16 months later than planned, which resulted in losses estimated by experts at least $3.2 billion. By the way, luggage in Denver is still processed with the participation of people. The airport administration was afraid to entrust such a responsible business to the computer system. As they say, God saves the saved money.
The Denver scandal was not the only one. In the same year, 1995, Intuit, a company specializing in the production of software for tax calculations and accounting automation for small businesses, suffered from the mistakes of its programmers.
In March 1995, it was discovered that the company's tax clearance software contained errors in the program code, which allowed users in some circumstances to make changes to the records on the company's central server, where the data of all clients of the automated tax settlement system were stored. A scandal erupted that ended with Intuit committing itself to recover any losses incurred by customers as a result of errors in the software of the developed product.
However, for commercial software, most often it is limited to the release of patches or patch(s) to correct previously identified errors. This is especially true for Microsoft programmers whose rare program does not require dozens or even hundreds of "patches".
And official representatives of Microsoft admit that all their new software products come on sale with a certain amount of defects. So, for example, on the data leaked into the press, Windows-2000 at the moment of an exit in light (on February, 17th, 2000) contained more than 60 thousand (!) errors and defects. How not to remember the story that happened in its time with Academician A. F. Ioffe. It is said that the engineering work of Abram Fedorovich began with the repair of the dilapidated bridge.
The engineer-technologist, who has just graduated from the institute, immediately proposed a repair plan, thanks to which the bridge could be not only repaired, but also brought to a condition, when it would have stood for decades, without requiring any repair at all. The reaction of the management was unexpected.
"Come on, you little brat! - The head of the future academician was outraged. - After all, in this case, all the repair opportunities will be exhausted and we will have to live on one salary"!
Not otherwise, programmers often follow the same principle. Because there is no need to write any "patches" to a fully debugged program...
In 1996, the French distinguished themselves. Due to software bugs, the flight of the Ariane 5 space rocket was interrupted on June 4. Losses, as a result, amounted to more than 500 million dollars. The reason was that the variable that described the horizontal speed of the rocket was represented by a 16-bit number.
As a result, once that variable exceeded 32,768 (2 to the 15th degree), the missile's control system was "ashes" as it is called, and the "crazy" missile had to be destroyed.
To be continued in the next part https://zen.yandex.ru/profile/editor/id/5d7f7f203639e600ac6686e5/5d8ce12c1ee34f00ac8b80bc/edit