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Comment on Ask HN: Have any notable companies failed because of poor code?

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Southwest Airlines, just this past winter. Multiple factors were involved, but chief among these appears to have been a series of deficiencies in its "outdated" scheduling system (which upper management was well aware of, but it didn't want to foot the bill for a proper fix).

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1145616523/southwest-airlines...

And from the WSJ: https://archive.is/3ujIL

What about a lack of tests, or bad coding standards?

We don't know the particulars, but one can reasonably infer that the root causes were broader and more systemic than that (i.e. a mix of technical and organizational issues).

SWA hasn't exactly "failed"

It didn't collapse entirely - but by all accounts, it was a major failure.

They're still going pretty strong, from what I see and hear ... IOW, they handled that failure relatively well

You can spin it that way if you want.

It was a good chunk of money out the door for them, in any case.

it's not "spin" :)

they're haven't gone out of business, and show no signs of doing so for the foreseeable future :)

You keep dialing back the definition of "fail" to mean "to go out of business."

In common usage its meaning is far broader -- it can also mean e.g. "to screw up spectacularly" (in a way that cost the company very significantly, even if it isn't forced out of business as a result).

OP asked about a "company failing"

You're the one twisting that into a "a failure which may or may not have been recovered from" :)

You can read it however you want.

But in that context, the meaning was clearly open-ended.

I read it the way it's written: "have any notable companies failed"

Not "have any notable companies had a failure"

Big difference there, friend :)

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