Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
In the rest of the world making sure your product works like it is supposed to is considered table stakes. In software we somehow consider checking the parts of it we can think of 'good enough' and the rest unproductive
> In the rest of the world making sure your product works like it is supposed to is considered table stakes.

I don't think that's true.

In medicine, science often doesn't know how specific drug really is working. They just do a lot of tests and if these tests are positive enough, they ship it. I think it's good analogy. Biology is very complicated and it's out of our grasp to truly understand how various parts of it interact with each other on so many levels. But if something helps, it's stupid not to use it just because we don't fully understand it. Sometimes it bites. Sometimes it bites 30 years later. But we still follow that approach.

Software is similar. The complexity of the systems we build is enormous, when we're taking in account all the moving parts. I just read that someone emits radiowaves toggling memory bit and ex-filtrating information. How can you account for that? Probably you can't. But we still need software for good things.

Not many products are held to the same standard as software. An equivalent would be something like recalling a car model because the breaks stop working when an attacker cuts the brake line.