The Art of Defensive Programming | JavaScript Bosnia

The European Space Agency’s Ariane 5 Flight 501 was destroyed 40 seconds after takeoff (June 4, 1996). The US$1 billion prototype rocket self-destructed due to a bug in the on-board guidance software. A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for at least five patient deaths in the 1980s when it administered excessive quantities of X-rays. The software error of a MIM-104 Patriot, caused its system clock to drift by one third of a second over a period of one hundred hours — resulting in failure to locate and intercept an incoming missile. The Iraqi missile impacted in a military compound in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia (February 25, 1991), killing 28 Americans.