Writing software that's safe even in the presence of bugs makes the challenge even more interesting.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Anytime you put a challenge out there, people come up with a creative solution on the software side.
However, writing software without defects is not sufficient. In my experience, it is at least as difficult to write software that is safe - that is, software that behaves reasonably under adverse conditions.
At Microsoft, the magic of software is used to take on very interesting challenges.
I like taking up challenges. I prefer working with scripts that are different and veer from the tried and tested. So far, it's always worked.
When I write software, I know that it will fail, either due to my own mistake, or due to some other cause.
A lot of people assume that creating software is purely a solitary activity where you sit in an office with the door closed all day and write lots of code.
I'm not saying we purposely introduced bugs or anything, but this is kind of a natural result of any complexities of software... that you can't fully test it.
Writing software is a very intense, very personal thing. You have to have time to work your way through it, to understand it. Then debug it.
In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.
I don't like creating software anymore. It's too exact. It's like karate; there's no room for error.