Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:
Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote:

Ed Kyle wrote:


The reported facts about DART are consistent with a software
issue of some kind. Software fails when it has not been
adequately tested.

No, software usually continues to execute, or executes to completion,
in which case the end state may or may not result in a lock up,
or an infinite loop.

Usually it's the software engineers that fail.


Program managers who fail to test to find faults in
complex software are the ones who should be blamed.

Actually it's mathematics and nature itself that is to blame,
that pesky two to the power of two recursively iterated thing.

No software engineer can design perfect algorithims that
work perfectly in every circumstance, especially when
the circumstance is rangefinding and/or pattern recognition
in low earth orbit using detectors and guidance systems
that may have originally been designed for other purposes
and were brought together in a hurry on a limited budget
and tight schedule.

Your lack of understanding of software and hardware is stunning.

But by all means, keep posting about something you know little about!

I see that you've done a little JavaScript coding on your
web page, so I assume you are aware that software
can fail without entering a recursive loop. A simple
problem like that would be caught during basic
debugging. The real killer failures, the ones that don't
appear unless conditions are "just so", may not make
themselves apparent without a well-designed system-
level testing effort.

- Ed Kyle