this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
230 points (98.3% liked)

Programmer Humor

34779 readers
47 users here now

Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)

Rules:

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 7 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 43 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)
  • A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for at least five patient deaths in the 1980s when it administered excessive quantities of beta radiation.
  • Radiation therapy planning software RTP/2 created by Multidata Systems International could incorrectly double the dosage of radiation depending on how the technician entered data into the machine. At least eight patients died, while another 20 received overdoses likely to cause significant health problems (November 2000).
  • A Medtronic heart device was found vulnerable to remote attacks (2008-03).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Tracking_years

[–] synicalx@lemm.ee 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

For the 99.99% of people that don’t make software that can kill people, OPs post is true.

No one cares if “uber but for X” has some downtime because some dingus forgot what a linked list is.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 day ago

Which is good, because we'd have a lot less software if it all had to be completely bulletproof.

[–] superweeniehutjrs@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago

Life safety systems, fire protection, most controls, really

[–] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

Hello, I am Felon Musk and I will rewrite all of.code on earth for everything because I am a god and absolutely everything will be chainsaw and blueballs fantastic.

I am srsly.

[–] alykanas@slrpnk.net 11 points 2 days ago

If you’ve worked in aerospace, you may have heard the phrase “we ain’t in the washing machine business”

[–] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 days ago

Or self driving cars.