this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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One Expensive Mistake (lemmy.nz)
submitted 7 hours ago by Grumpus_Maximus@thelemmy.club to c/historymemes@piefed.social
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[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

To be fair, an Ariane 5 rocket failed because of a float being treated as a double, or something similar. I don't remember the details, but what makes it embarrassing is that it was the result of recycling code from Ariane 4.

[–] filcuk@feddit.uk 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I don't think recycling code is embarrassing? No-one can be expected to write a new codebase from scratch for every new product or machine. That would be worse than building on top of a solid foundation.

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

It isn't. Never testing that it's compatible with the new hardware platform is.

[–] filcuk@feddit.uk 2 points 18 minutes ago

Having read up on it quickly, the real issue was with a lack of tests and failure handling, so you're not wrong.
Apparently this code wasn't even necessary to run after liftoff, yet it caused the self-destruct.
Crazy.