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This story was covered in the book 'Set Phasers On Stun' (https://www.amazon.com/Set-Phasers-Stun-Design-Technology/dp...). It was required reading in our Introduction to Engineering class in first year.

As an engineering student it was meant to imprint one thing upon us, but talk about a dark introduction to the word 'responsibility'...

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Before I switched to CS, I was in a EE program. Our intro to engineering class was filled with stuff like the outdoor decorative fountain that killed six people one at a time, and the transformer box that was used in a game of hide + seek (the lock was missing).

In the case of the fountain, several couples had had a night out and decided to splash in the fountain. The first two knocked a power conduit for one of the pumps loose, electrocuting themselves. The others died as they each entered the fountain to rescue the others. The system lacked a GFCI protector.

My introduction to computing course had us read about the Therac-25 and write an essay about it.

While code we write doesn't always have such dire consequences, it was an eye opener to me as a freshman in college. It definitely made designing software/hardware to never fail have a much higher priority on my list of priorities.

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