Recently posted on Ruby Talk, under the title ‘This System Must have been Written in Ruby’
At 1950 feet (around 700 meters) the airplane’s left altimeter suddenly and mistakenly registered an altitude of 8 feet (about 2 meters) below sea level and passed the reading on to the automatic control system, Van Vollenhoven said.
But the autopilot reduced gas to the engines and the plane lost speed, decelerating until, at a height of 450 feet (150 meters) it was about to stall. Warning systems alerted the pilots.
It appears that then the pilots immediately gave gas, full gas, however it was too late to recover,’’ ...The plane fell into a freshly plowed field, striking the ground tail first and breaking into three pieces.
I assume the poster’s position is that this is the kind of thing that happens when non-statically typed languages are used to implement mission critical functions.
I just discovered that my old friend, Ward Cunningham has started putting some short interviews, and “video essays” up on YouTube