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The Therac-25 Incident (2021)

(thedailywtf.com)
449 points lemper | 2 comments | 27 Aug 25 06:57 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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michaelt ◴[27 Aug 25 08:19 UTC] No.45036843[source]▶
I'd be interested in knowing how many of y'all are being taught about this sort of thing in college ethics/safety/reliability classes.

I was taught about this in engineering school, as part of a general engineering course also covering things like bathtub reliability curves and how to calculate the number of redundant cooling pumps a nuclear power plant needs. But it's a long time since I was in college.

Is this sort of thing still taught to engineers and developers in college these days?

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1. wocram ◴[27 Aug 25 08:47 UTC] No.45036999[source]▶
This was part of our Systems Engineering class, something like this: https://web.mit.edu/6.033/2014/wwwdocs/assignments/therac25....
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2. smarks ◴[28 Aug 25 02:06 UTC] No.45047534[source]▶
Thanks for posting this. The Leveson article is IMO the definitive study on this incident. I’m going to repost at top level for emphasis.