Software is buggy. Some of my buddies in the industry tell me that it IS possible to write reliable code, but very expensive. So expensive and time-consuming that it is almost never done. Think about that for a minute. We live in a too-big-too-fail world that’s held together by software that’s almost guaranteed to fail. Sometime.
AS a former software engineer, I laughed when I read what the Securities and Exchange Commission might be considering in response to the debacle of Knight Capital’s runaway computerized stock trades: forcing companies to fully test their computer systems before deploying coding changes.
That policy may sound sensible, but if you know anything about computers, it is funny on several accounts.
via After Knight Capital, New Code for Trades – NYTimes.com.
Truth and Traditions 