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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

"most developers identify as the average"

That is what average means

Let's make this more obvious: Imagine that in you have to produce Nitroglycerine, explosive set off by the slightest of mistakes.

Would you rather it done by someone superbly clever, but straight out of uni, or someone who's average, but has done it for 20 years and survived?

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Well if you are happy that you found someone that can follow a checklist then fine. I doubt the top tier grad would want that type of job anyway.

Do you know how many hundred top tier chemical and nuclear scientists died while "following the checklist"? Look up Demon Core

1, you are now really exaggerating. 2, this analogy is really straying far from software engineering. 3, what is your point here?

IIRC the work with Demon Core was described as "tickling the dragon's tail", not "following the checklist". Wikipedia also mentions "Slotin's own unapproved protocol".

Also how could there be a checklist? They were literally pioneers

An easy way to create one would be to ask "what could go wrong" and "how bad would it be", then develop procedures to minimize the risk.

You are right, it's a different point - just trying to illustrate that being some of the smartest people on earth doesnt mean you wont make a terrible mistake or will have good judgement.

Like they knew it was super dangerous, there wasn't new science discovered since then about this particular setup. Today rank and file engineers know not to do that

Not calling you out, but where did you get the number deaths > 100 from?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident

Problem was, there was no real checklist. They were part of a huge number of people who have created the checklists, partly as a result of lessons learned after making mistakes resulting in death and destruction.

Out of interest with your name Google234, are you a student or early employee? You seem to be very certain about things in your comments here but I'm unsure if they come from experience or speculation.

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