What the Errors Tell Us

Margaret Hamilton talks about her experiences over the last 60 years and how a “theory of errors” was derived from the errors made along the way. Its axioms of control led to the Universal Systems Language (USL) together with its automation and preventative paradigm, development-before-the-fact. The pressing issues haven’t gone away, largely because the traditional paradigm continues in force. With a preventative paradigm, most errors aren’t allowed into a system in the first place, just by the way the system is defined. Unlike a traditional approach, with a preventative approach the more reliable the system, the higher the productivity in its lifecycle. This article is part of a theme issue on software engineering’s 50th anniversary.