SafeWare
System Safety and Computers
by Nancy Leveson · first published 1995
13mentions
6recommended by
9HN commenters
2014–2025first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
xvii, 680 p. : 25 cm
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I presume this is the same Nancy Leveson who wrote Safeware? If I could push one book on all engineers (and not just programmers as it goes over entire systems failures), let it be this, I recommend it to everyone. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Safeware-System-Safety-Computers-19...…
on “Boeing software under scrutiny as Ethiopia prepares crash report” ↗Excellent, will check it out, thank! Actually just looked at the wiki page, that's enough for me to order it today. In return may I offer this absolutely bitchin' tome Safeware by Nancy Leveson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Safeware-System-Safety-Computers-19... which I can't recommend enough. It's aimed at a lower level than your book AFAICT (lower level = less about interconnectedness…
on “Hinkley Point C nuclear plant to run £2.9bn over budget” ↗Just going to leave this here: https://www.amazon.com/Safeware-Computers-Nancy-G-Leveson/dp... Note that this book is 30 years old!
on “Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?” ↗Safeware by Nancy Leveson.
on “Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?” ↗The article's not silly. Leveson and Hamilton's works cover that explicitly. Start with Engineering a Safer World's Intent Specifications, move on to Safeware, and look at the attention that goes into writing the right TLA+ specs. Lists like "Government regulations, flaky hardware…" look a lot like the upper levels of the hierarchical control systems contemplated…
on “Programmers who want to change how we code before catastrophe strikes” ↗Also see: "Safeware: System Safety and Computers" and the work of the author, Nancy Leveson: http://sunnyday.mit.edu/
on “Software bug that killed 4 people” ↗…about this incident read Leveson’s analysis. [1]: N. G. Leveson and C. S. Turner, "An investigation of the Therac-25 accidents," in Computer, vol. 26, no. 7, pp. 18-41, July 1993. [2]: Nancy Leveson. Safeware: System Safety and Computers. Addison-Wesley, 1995. [3]: http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf [4]: https://web.mit.edu/6.033/2014/wwwdocs/papers/therac.pdf
on “The Therac-25 Incident (2021)” ↗Safeware is good. I read it back in the day. Several good failure analysis.
on “Hands-on Assignment – Therac-25 (2007)” ↗Nancy Leveson's been saying that for decades: http://www.amazon.com/Safeware-Computers-Nancy-G-Leveson/dp/...
on “United Airlines System-Wide Computer Problem” ↗Contrary to what that link says, the software was not thoroughly tested. Normal testing was bypassed - per management request after a small code change. This was covered in a book (perhaps Safeware, but maybe another one I dont recall) along with the Therac 25, the Ariane V, and several others. Unfortunately these lessons need to be relearned by each generation. See the 737-Max...
on “Level 3 Global Outage” ↗…[1]? Seems like something that'd be of interest to you. Started on it this week, my sister is in her class this semester at MIT. I'll be tackling it over the next few weeks, and then her previous text (Safeware) after the new year. [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world [1] http://sunnyday.mit.edu/
on “Kent Beck: “I get paid for code that works, not for tests” (2013)” ↗I read the icon to mean 29% of data loss is caused by human error, as opposed to hardware failure, etc. How that's measured, I have no idea (the citation is "Safeware, 2001" for what it's worth).
on “Today is World Backup Day – a friendly reminder to backup and check restores” ↗Gladly! It's the second of these, "An investigation of the Therac-25 accidents" (1993) w/ DOI 10.1109/MC.1993.274940. #1 is a later version that was an appendix to her book Safeware (which I have not read), and [3] is a nice second read that follows up on [2] many years later but isn't quite the relentless engineering detective story that makes the original so poignant.
on “Hands-on Assignment – Therac-25 (2007)” ↗