The Economist - USA (2020-08-22)

16 The EconomistAugust 22nd 2020

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Letters

When the computer says no

The software problems of

Boeing, General Electric, Volks-

wagen and others are not new

(Schumpeter, July 18th). The

term “software engineering”

was coined in the 1960s in the

hope that traditional engineer-

ing methods could be applied

to software development.

Today, we routinely use sys-

tems that are far more complex

and robust, which have largely

been built by developers

trained in computer science

and software engineering.

There is fierce competition to

employ those skills; some

companies hire graduates from

coding schools with as little as

three months of training.

Schumpeter noted the

impact of rapidly changing

technology on system quality.

This is known as “technical

debt”, an accumulation of

problems with varying severity

that makes it difficult and

expensive to maintain the

code. Some of the world’s

critical software systems are

based on code originally writ-

ten over 40 years ago. The large

legacy companies rely heavily

on writing their own propri-

etary code with its high rate of

errors, rather than including

open-source software compo-

nents that reduce the amount

of new code, which would

minimise the number of bugs.

Our ability to develop software

has improved, but companies

that construct physical sys-

tems, such as cars, continue to

underestimate what it takes to

build high-quality software on

time and on budget.

tony wasserman

Professor of software

management practice

Carnegie Mellon University,

Silicon Valley

Mountain View, California

There are three other factors

that explain why companies

struggle with software pro-

jects. First, the general lack of

knowledge about information

literacy and computational

thinking: many managers have

never had any formal training

in them. Second, software

projects often change their

scope and direction half way

through the exercise. It is good

to test new ideas, but that

comes with a cost or delay that

many executives struggle to

understand. Imagine building

a bridge and every week the

plan changes. Would you

expect it to be built on time and

on budget?

And third, many “vision-

aries” love large transforma-

tional projects that turn the

company upside down. But

software is much more about

improving the experience of

people who work with it. Com-

panies should start small and

scale up where value emerges,

not the other way around.

jose carvalho

Madrid

Another problem is depen-

dency: software depends on

other software. For example,

when you start a project in

JavaScript and add a few

dependencies you will pull in

hundreds of other depen-

dencies, written over years by

thousands of developers. Each

dependency is like a block of

Lego. We attach them together

by the bits at the edge (the

interface) and assume that the

bits in the middle work well.

Most programmers spend their

time attaching these blocks

together, hoping that every-

thing works well.

The main risk-mitigation

strategy is to use dependencies

that everyone else is using. The

thinking goes that someone

else would surely have audited

the code or found issues with

it. This works, until it doesn’t.

A dependency might disappear

or it might inject malicious

code into the application. Most

programmers lack the knowl-

edge and inclination to search

for issues in this vast stack.

We build skyscrapers of

Lego, focusing on the top and

only paying attention to our

dependencies when the sky-

scraper starts swaying. This is

not laziness. If every program-

mer tried to rewrite their stack

it would take decades, and the

world would have moved on.

Besides, the next project is due

in 14 days.

krishna sundarram

Engineer at Facebook

London

RebalancingBritain

Youranaemicplanfor“level-

lingup”Britainwoulddolittle

toachievethatgoal(“Levelling

upBritain”,August1st).You

didn’tmentionhs2, a high-

speedraillink,thebestand

mostambitiousschemeto

(literally)bridgethenorth,

MidlandsandsouthinEngland

andlinkLondonfarbetterto

regionalcities.Youpraised

devolutionwhileignoringthe

weaktaxbaseofthenorth:

handingdowntax-raising

powerswithoutrealresources

isworsethanuseless.Andyou

treatedasa jokea serious

proposaltorelocateParlia-

menttothenorth,whichcould

domorethananyotherpoliti-

calreformtorebalanceBritain.

andrewadonis

HouseofLords

London

Unacceptable

Youmentionedthatfew

HindusinIndiaobservestrict

ritualpurityorconsiderDalits

literallyuntouchable(“No

escape”,July25th).Yetabouta

quarteroftherespondentsto

theIndiaHumanDevelopment

Surveyof 201 1-12wereaverseto

Dalitsenteringtheirkitchenor

sharingutensils.Thefigure

cutsacrossreligiousgroups

(30%forHindus),castesand

geography.

amolsinghraswan

Evanston,Illinois

Bad ideas

“See no evil” (August 8th)

observed that after the second

world war philosophy that

challenged racism “tended to

flow westward” from Europe to

America. However, in the

decades leading up to the war it

was the American concept of

race that affected events in

Europe. The Nazis, for ex-

ample, were influenced by

America’s virulently racist laws

of the late 19th and early 20th-

centuries, particularly with

regards to eugenics and misce-

genation. In 1935, the Third

Reich sent legal experts who

had crafted its racial policies to

study American race law under

the guise of researching legal

and economic life. “Mein

Kampf” praised America’s

Immigration Act of 1924, which

excluded most Asians; in 1928

Hitler spoke approvingly of

white settlers gunning down

millions of indigenous people.

eva stoumbos

Port Angeles, Washington

Your review of a book on Nazi

spies in the United States (“The

Führer’s man in Manhattan”,

August 15th) notes the strength

of Nazi hostility to America.

There was also great admira-

tion. The Nazis looked to the

Jim Crow laws in the South as

their model for the Nuremberg

laws that targeted Jews.

john williams

Cardiff

Leadership qualities

Reading Bartleby on judgment

(July 18th) brought to mind The

Economist’s description of

Clement Attlee in 1935, long

before he was recognised as

one of Britain’s greatest prime

ministers: he “lacks the con-

spicuous attributes of a leader”

but “has undeniable ability,

judgment and integrity” (“Mr

Attlee and Sir A. Sinclair”,

November 30th 1935). Looking

back at his success Attlee came

up with this little ditty:

Few thought he was even a

starter

There were many who thought

themselves smarter

But he ended pm

chand om

An earl and a knight of the

garter.

andrew carroll

Sale, Cheshire

Bagehot’s column on the “lem-

ons” in government (July 18th)

reminded me of something

one of my surgical bosses said

of John Moore, a health min-

ister under Margaret Thatcher:

“He rose without trace.”

andrew arnold

Barnoldswick, Lancashire