The days when a car aficionado could repair his or her own car are long past, due primarily to the high software content.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
As a rule, software systems do not work well until they have been used, and have failed repeatedly, in real applications.
The fundamental problem with program maintenance is that fixing a defect has a substantial chance of introducing another.
Software as an asset isn't stable over time; it needs to be maintained.
Software comes from heaven when you have good hardware.
One of the reasons microcomputers progressed so fast is people are willing to accept crashes. It's faster to build something and try it, even if it means you'll have to rebuild later... If you spent too much time building and massaging one vehicle, you don't learn anything.
People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
Today there are two points where a car manufacturer has interaction with you as an owner of a car. One, you buy the car. Two, you go to the car shop to repair the car.
In short, software is eating the world.
You don't need to recall 100,000 cars because you need to fix something. That can be done with a download of software.
Most of the effort in the software business goes into the maintenance of code that already exists.