SafeWare
We are building systems today-and using computers to control them-that have the potential for large-scale destruction of life and environment. More than ever, software engineers and system developers, as well as their managers, must understand the issues and develop the skills needed to anticipate and prevent accidents. Nancy Leveson examines what is currently known about building safe electromechanical systems and looks at past accidents to see what practical lessons can be applied to new computer-controlled systems.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
13mentions
9people
2014–2025years
62% recommend38% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Just going to leave this here: https://www.amazon.com/Safeware-Computers-Nancy-G-Leveson/dp...
Note that this book is 30 years old!
- I believe the definitive analysis of the Therac-25 incident was written by Nancy Leveson, first in IEEE Computer,[1] and later as an appendix of her book.[2] The appendix is freely available as a PDF on the web [3][4] and probably other places. Many people here are asking questions about what happened and how it came about. The answers to many of these questions can be found there. I strongly recommend that anyone who is serious about safety and wants to learn more 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
- Safeware is good. I read it back in the day. Several good failure analysis.
- Also see: "Safeware: System Safety and Computers"
and the work of the author, Nancy Leveson:
- Safeware by Nancy Leveson.
- 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 of large systems) but it's a must read.
