Posts by peterfoster

You're not Boeing to believe this: Yet another show-stopping software bug found in ill-fated 737 Max airplanes

Re: Those moneychangers...

I used to work for an established silicon valley software outfit.

When business was good Sales led the company.

When Sales revenue was down the Services/Support monkeys would take control on the basis of all the services/support revenue they "commanded". The reality is that Services/support revenue is sticky (think multi-year contracts), and was actually sold by Sales anyway. In many cases the Services team are truly customer-toxic.

Under Services/support leadership revenue would typically dive as custom-toxic policies kill new sales.

Finance would then take over. Cuts in all areas follow. Product roadmap screwed.

When Legal take over you have arrived at the end.

Re: Not just code

Each 737 max flight computer contains two CPUs with code written by different teams to reduce possibility of code errors. One CPU is Intel 80286 variant, the other a similar vintage Motorola chip.

Totally agree with previous comments that re-architecting this stuff from dual standalone to some federated Frankenstein would be tuff (impossible?).

To make life more interesting for the software team it is widely speculated that the CPUs are already heavily utilised.