Coding is one of the highest art forms achieved by mankind; an idea - just an electrical impulse - is made real in an alternate electronic universe; the created idea however, does not have physical form, and yet can change the physical world; it cannot be touched, and yet may touch all mankind.
Error checking
We often don't take error checking seriously enough; but sometimes the programs we write control real-world obejcts
This story was told by people from Motorola and is supposedly included in every microcontroller training course Motorola gives.
Test flights of F-16's were being conducted in Israel. The F-16's were doing low height rounds. On approach to the Dead Sea, the whole navigation system suddenly reset itself. The daring pilot landed the bird. HQ called up Motorola and ordered a team on the spot ASAP. The ground tests went perfectly, but every time the bird went airborn, it rebooted.
The pilots were getting restless. Flying on the border of hostile territory without navcom, with the Arabs pointing their earth-to-air missiles at anything that moves, wasn't that pleasant. Neither was debugging the whole navcom in-flight. Then someone figured it out.
The height of the Dead Sea relative to world sea level is -400 meters. As soon as the F-16 reached sea level, the navcom did a divide by zero, crashed, and rebooted.
Last updated: 20161122-12:20