Programming's Greatest Mistakes
summary
Starts with a personal bug that corrupts saved queries and a hastily shipped utility labelled Med file unfuck, then chronicles real losses: Y2K costing ~half a trillion to patch, the Pentium FPU rounding error recalled for $475M, Knight Capital’s mis-set bit flag causing $4.5B of trades, and Mars probes lost to unit and transcription errors. Explains actual failures (Fortran math omission, Roman-numeral overflow at 38, metric vs imperial unit mismatch), the exact tools involved, and whether fixes or recalls resolved the damage.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (16)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:35The med file unf*cker
- 5:51Y2K
- 14:39The Kennel club "Dog 38" bug
- 17:00EnTErpRIsE
- 20:43The Pentium FPU
- 23:45NULL
- 26:43Hartford Center
- 29:20Knight Capital
- 35:32Mariner 1
- 38:11Mars Climate Orbiter
- 40:25Ariane 5
- 42:01The big rewrite
- 43:57JavaScript
- 49:39The Soviet early warning system
- 51:07Outro
