Peter Norvig: How Well Does the Program Run When it Isn't Running?

And think about failure modes�I remember one of the great lessons I got about programming was when I showed up at the airport at Heathrow, and there was a power failure and none of the computers were working. But my plane was on time.

Somehow they had gotten print-outs of all the flights. 1 don't know where�there must have been some computer off-site, i don't know whether they printed them that morning or if they had a procedure of always printing them the night before and sending them over and every day when there is power they just throw them out But somehow they were there and the people at the gates had a procedure for using the paper backup rather than using die computer system.

I thought that was a great lesson in software design. 1 think most programmers don't think about, "How well does my program work when there's no power?"

Notes:

An important use-case for any software, what's the work-around for when the program isn't running?

Folksonomies: programming unit testing software

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Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Seibel , Peter (2009-09-16), Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming, Apress, Retrieved on 2011-04-21

Source Material [codersatwork.com]

Folksonomies: information technology programming computer science