Software: The greatest software error in history?
In The Price of Panic, a detailed, albeit dated, overview of the world’s Covid-19 response, the authors note the use of Neil Ferguson’s ICL Covid simulator software – and its…
It’s worse than we thought: “Second Analysis of Ferguson’s Model”
In the past I had some comments on Neil Ferguson’s disease model and have repeatedly noted its poor quality. This model was used, last spring, as the basis for setting…
Japan pulls its coronavirus tracking smartphone app due to software design errors
The Japanese government has pledged to fix within a week bugs that have caused its coronavirus contact-tracing smartphone app to be shut down, the health minister said Tuesday. The free…
Experts criticize ICL’s Ferguson’s Covid SIM model as garbage
Those of us who have seen Neil Ferguson’s ICL Covid sim model have the same views as this computational epidemiologist: As Ferguson himself admits, the code was written 13 years…
ICL Covid-simulation source code
I will not comment on Covid-19 and only make a few comments on the publicly available source code. This is not a comment about whether models should be used –…
Software: Why hiring professional software engineers might have been a good idea #IowaCaucus
Oh my: It wasn’t so much that the new app that the Iowa Democratic Party had planned to use to report its caucus results didn’t work. It was that people…
A call for a code of tech ethics?
Some are calling for a "code of tech ethics", particularly regarding social media and privacy issues. Where this is logically headed is to Professional Engineer licensing for at least some…
Software Quality Assurance amusement of the day
I seem to run into many software defects, ranging from the amusing, like this one, to serious errors. I occasionally do screen captures and post them on my personal Facebook…
Top programming languages as of December 2016
Java C (but popularity has fallen by half year over year) C++ Python Visual Basic .NET PHP Javascript Assembly language Perl Objective-C Ruby Swift Visual Basic Delphi/Object Pascal Go R…
US GAO’s full report on HealthCare.gov management failures
Here is the full report: Ineffective Planning and Oversight Practices Underscore the Need for Improved Contract Management (PDF) I do not have time to read it just now but look…
Cover Oregon software failed due to “ideological blindness” to the organization and management failures
Cover Oregon ran Oregon’s failed online health insurance market; it never enrolled a private individual and is being abandoned in a shift to the Federal HealthCare.gov web service. The system…
Developing Android apps using App Inventor 2
Front Page | Explore MIT App Inventor. App Inventor is perhaps the fastest and easiest way to develop custom Android applications. App Inventor uses a graphical programming model in a…
The difference between software engineering and computer science
Computing Now | Putting the Engineering into Software Engineering Education. (I have an undergrad degree in computer science and one of my graduate degrees is in software engineering. They are…