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240 points yusufaytas | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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galeaspablo ◴[] No.41894762[source]
Many engineers don’t truly care about the correctness issue, until it’s too late. Similar to security.

Or they care but don’t bother checking whether what they’re doing is correct.

For example, in my field, where microservices/actors/processes pass messages between each other over a network, I dare say >95% of implementations I see have edge cases where messages might be lost or processed out of order.

But there isn’t an alignment of incentives that fixes this problem. Ie the payment structures for executives and engineers aren’t aligned with the best outcome for customers and shareholders.

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1. secondcoming ◴[] No.41895407[source]
> 95% of implementations I see have edge cases where messages might be lost or processed out of order.

Eek. This sort of thing can end up with innocent people in jail, or dead.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

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2. noprocrasted ◴[] No.41895622[source]
The problem (or the solution, depending on which side you're on) is that innocent people are in jail or dead. The people that knowingly allowed this to happen are still free and wealthy.

So I'm not particularly sure this is a good example - if anything, it sets the opposite incentives, that even jailing people or driving them to suicide won't actually have any consequences for you.