[SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux

[Steve Tockey]

Chris,
To make you more aware, it hasn’t been just “small like-minded groups”. I
teach a number of software engineering classes for Construx
(www.construx.com). I usually teach about 30-40 classes each year, and
classes average about 20 attendees. So that’s essentially a minimum of
around 600 people per year. While I don’t publish a monthly blog, I do
publish the occasional magazine article. Again, I avoid using the term
“bug” wherever possible and only use “defect”. See, for example,
“Insanity, Hiring, and the Software Industry” in the November, 2015 issue
of IEEE Computer.


― steve


-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Hills <safetyyork at phaedsys.com>
Organization: Phaedrus Systems
Reply-To: "safetyyork at phaedsys.com" <safetyyork at phaedsys.com>
Date: Friday, February 23, 2018 at 3:02 AM
To: Steve Tockey <Steve.Tockey at construx.com>
Cc: 'Peter Bernard Ladkin' <ladkin at causalis.com>,
"systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de"
<systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
Subject: RE: [SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux

Hi Steve

Individuals in isolation quietly mentioning it to small like-minded groups
won't help.  We need  movement in the mainstream, with some momentum.

I have managed to get (so far) about  a dozen well known people in the
industry who write blogs, newsletters and magazine articles to commit to
raising "error not bug"  every month or so through 2018.  If more of you
join in and we get enough people publishing (blogs, newsletters, articles,
papers, conference presentations etc) we might actually start to change the
culture  after that we can go for World Peace (after that we can attempt
the
reform of US gun laws :-)  )

Chris 

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Tockey [mailto:Steve.Tockey at construx.com]


For what it’s worth, I have been using “defect” instead of “bug” for at
least 20 years. I’m not sure how much of an impact it really had, but
developers I talk to do seem to understand the problem with using the term
“bug”.

On the other hand, a consultant buddy of mine likes to call them,
“Developer malpractice”.


Cheers,

― steve

发自我的 iPad

> On Feb 23, 2018, at 1:19 AM, Chris Hills <safetyyork at phaedsys.com> wrote:
> 
> The point is as PBL says " that the meme associated with "error" contains
a deprecatory social value-judgement."   It is a culture we need to change.
Peoples mind-set.  Largely amongst the  average "programmer" rather than
the
safety Engineers or critical systems developers. We need to replace "bug"
with "error" at  every opportunity if we are to make this cultural change
before some of us are killed by a software bug in our retirement homes.
> 
> This change will probably take a decade and I doubt we will see any
material changes for a year or two so the sooner we start the better.
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: systemsafety
[mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of
Peter Bernard Ladkin
> Sent: Friday, February 23, 2018 5:00 AM
> To: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
> Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Safety Culture redux
> 
> It is a little odd to see Les arguing for the relative pointlessness of
words and dictionaries while suggesting at the same time that code review
is
a most effective engineering procedure.
> 
> Code, in the sense in which we speak of it in "code review", is a series
of assertions in a formal language. A sort of non-fiction book (of
instructions or declarations, whichever is your style).
> When we review that book, we interpret its statements according to what
>we
think is their meaning.
> Dictionaries are devices which say what individual words mean. The only
reason code review can be successful at all is because of that binding of
word and phrase to meaning.
> 
> Actually, fixing the meanings of individual words and phrases in this
formal language, binding words and phrases to short, clear meanings in an
exceptionless way, turns out to be one of the most effective methods in the
engineering of reliable programs, as shown originally by Algol 60 and
Pascal, as well as the language REFINE, now sadly defunct, in which I
implemented my thesis work, an algebraic structure for implementing
real-calendrical-time period calculations, and more recently by the decades
of experience with SPARK. And, conversely, not fixing them is known to be a
source of considerable vulnerability: witness, at the beginning of the
Internet era and the establishment of US CERT in the 1990's, the 80%-90% of
security vulnerabilities which could have been simply ruled out by using
technology that had already existed for thirty years, namely making your
data types behave according to the way you thought about them (aka strong
typing).
> 
> One may speak of words and dictionaries, but it is probably more
efficacious to speak of concepts and how they hang together.
> 
> Solving a problem, ameliorating an issue, inevitably involves
conceptualising it in such a way that a solution can be seen to be one. And
if it can be seen to be one, but doesn't turn out to be one, it likely
means
that you are missing part of the issue, that your conceptualisation turned
out to be inadequate. If you don't like the word "conceptualise" here,
please replace it by the word "understand", and I think you will see that
this is almost a banal statement. So, whatever you might prefer to call it,
conceptual analysis, otherwise known as "understanding the problem", is a
necessary part of solving many problems. And the best tool for conceptual
analysis is generally a set of clean and clear concepts, rather than
obscure
and exception-laden concepts (do I need to argue this?).
> 
> Anyway, the original issue raised by Chris is more about memes rather
>than
just about words. Chris pointed out that the meme associated with "error"
contains a deprecatory social value-judgement.
> Software people say all software contains bugs. And nothing follows from
that, for most people. If software people said instead that all software
contains errors, then there is a plethora of regulations and even laws
saying who is responsible for damage arising from design errors in
commercial products and it is at least possible that someone might start
trying to apply them.
> 
> PBL
> 
> Prof. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany MoreInCommon Je suis
Charlie
> Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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