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I really ought to dig up a reference for this, but there are strong echoes from the past here. Margaret Hamilton (who coined the term 'software engineering' and can be seen standing next to a tall pile of green bar printouts of the Apollo software) brought her daughter to work one weekend during the Apollo program and she (daughter) fiddled with the buttons and caused an error condition. Hamilton, based on this, argued that the software should account for the possibility of mistakes. Management's view was that the highly-trained astronauts wouldn't make mistakes. In time, Hamilton prevailed, and was proven correct.



If you find a reference (or anyone does), please share. This is too good a story not to be told widely.

Edit: here, at least, is a mention of the thing with her daughter in a Google Blog article: https://blog.google/products/maps/margaret-hamilton-apollo-1...


Having seen what happens when you let a toddler start randomly pressing stuff on an Android tablet she was spot on, and if anything every environment should be out through this.




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