Spiralling cost of error fixing story
Ok, now this tale comes from a lecture I attended at Swansea University in about 1975. Truth is, I don't know if it was made up by the lecturer, whose name I forget, or whether it's a fact. Googling comes up with nothing. Anyhow, here it is. The subject was "How much does an error cost to fix?". The lecturer wrote a single line of FORTRAN code on the board: DO 10 I = 1,3 "Now when the programmer took this down to be punch-carded onto Hollerith cards the typist made a mistake. They entered: DO 10 I = 1.3 How much to fix the change from a full-stop to a comma?" A long discussion followed - nothing if the programmer had spotted the mistake by checking the card immediately, more if it was found during testing and finally a lot if the project had already been delivered. He gave us the answer: "$50,000,000. It was in the aerial alignment code of NASA's Pioneer spacecraft. It should loop 3 times to line " 10 CONTINUE " in an a