A New Year - Where is Software in 2017

 In 2017, software in the car is going to expand. Car manufacturers are trying to create the self driving car. It seems pretty important, then, that the software is top quality. What does that mean? Well, it means that when Elon Musk declares that he will have a real self driving car soon, his engineers are probably pretty stressed. Because one of the contributions to poor software is software that is sold with a deadline before it is built. I just watched a show talking about Ford (the person) and Ferrari (the person), engaged in a battle 50 years ago to have their cars win the LeMond 24 hour race. Now Ferrari (the company) had been dominating the race for years, but Ford was determined to best them. The first year, the Ford cars were terribly unstable, crashed and burned (literally). The second year, Ford entered many more cars, put his best engineers on the case, including the famous Shelby, and still, Ford failed. In year 3, however, the cars were finally ready.  And they won. Ferrari, in fact, did not place.

Without a challenge, the best software might not be built. And the self driving car is a very interesting idea. It fits my view that software should serve a purpose. We pin our hopes on a self driving car for less crashes, less congestion, and many other things. So, I look forward to this application of software.

The first self driving cars may fail, and do so spectacularly. But from those failures will come successes. And given time, the best engineers will work out the dangers. It may never be the case that there isn't a 'driver' (see the airlines and the auto-pilot), but that's ok. Software should serve, not eliminate, humanity.