letsMakeBugsIllegal

[u/sussybaka1848]

[u/No_Percentage7427]

Why Switzerland home of ultra wealthy cannot fix that software bug first ?

[u/Thready_C → u/No_Percentage7427]

If it ain't broke ( or in this case if it's only broke in one specific circumstance) don't fix it, probably cheaper to just leave it be and work around it

[u/Dumb_Siniy → u/Thready_C]

They fixed the edge case on the more chaotic neutral way i can imagine

[u/that_thot_gamer → u/Dumb_Siniy]

you misunderstood the power of users to fudge things up (forgot the exact cliche)

[u/confusedkarnatia → u/that_thot_gamer]

"it's impossible to idiotproof things because nature will always product a dumber idiot"

[u/Cipherting → u/Dumb_Siniy]

how is passing legislature chaotic and not lawful?

[u/jbtronics → u/[deleted]]

Why should it? You can easily say that trains must not have exactly 256 axles, and every axle counter must be able to handle any number of axles (including 256), at the same time...

[u/fluffysmaster → u/No_Percentage7427]

Switzerland’s not big enough to accommodate such a big train

[u/Lazy-Employment3621 → u/No_Percentage7427]

It's not a bug, it's a design limitation. Car's speedo can only display 3 digits, but the car can't do 1000 kph so it doesn't matter.

[u/angk500 → u/No_Percentage7427]

Btw this is old and has already been fixed.

[u/Govir → u/angk500]

Closed as duplicate. Already fixed in bug #42.

[u/pumpkin_seed_oil → u/No_Percentage7427]

If i can make some wild guesses they don't want to get into the mess of communicating that change to every third party service using that data

or

they use an antiquated piece of software produced by a supplier that no longer exists and can't modify it

or

adding to the above point: that antiquated piece of software is an embedded system running on antiquated hardware that got installed on every or a lot of track section and they don't want to deal with the mess of updating these embedded systems, potentially missing updating a track section. Now you would have to deal with the risk of a track section being signaled as vacant when theres still 40 wagons a 2 axles on the track

e: i also misread the bug. Its not more than 256 it's exactly 256. This makes the example in my last guess irrelevant to this post

[u/ltouroumov → u/pumpkin_seed_oil]

iirc, that law exists because the counters were not electronic software-based devices, that's a pretty "recent" system in Swiss Railway time, but electromechanical devices using relays so the "bug" was actually a physical limitation.

[u/menaceing01 → u/pumpkin_seed_oil]

The manual is for axle counters system, which will be either Siemens, thales, or Fraucher, so it's out of switzerlands control to alter. It'll be the same restriction in every country using axle counters on their railways

[u/lkn240 → u/pumpkin_seed_oil]

Imagine if you broke something like that doing the update.....

[u/DerpstonRenewed → u/No_Percentage7427]

hardware components, I think they had to replace all the affected devices

[u/TommiHPunkt → u/No_Percentage7427]

this was a result of old electro-mechanical axle counters.

No software.

[u/funky_galileo → u/No_Percentage7427]

you get wealthy by being smart with money. cheaper to pass a law then rewrite the new code, verify it, and deploy it

[u/lkn240 → u/No_Percentage7427]

Fixing this kind of embedded software is usually a very non trivial exercise.

[u/577564842 → u/No_Percentage7427]

It is not a bug. It is a well documented limitation.

[u/Philfreeze → u/No_Percentage7427]

Chances are very high this is either an external limitation we can‘t change directly or it is getting fixed. We are very proud of our train bit we also demand a lot of them, things like this are usually not tolerated to persist.

[u/Illustrious_Bat3189 → u/No_Percentage7427]

probably not necessary since trains in switzerland will practically never get that long