Since 3 years, I'm working as a Safety Engineer. Starting in the Air Traffic Control domain, I now have to consider the functional safety of locomotives. So in parallel, my perspective is extended to physical, mechanical things, which is really cool.
Along with this evolution, my interest is focusing on the question how software has to be built in a functional safety related context. This is a question which strongly relates to the problem of how to overcome the human imperfection and avoid human errors in concept, architecture and in the whole technical realization of a system from the beginning. It is a question for methods, provability and well known and well tested engineering practice.
In consequence, today my view on modeling of requirements, system architecture and function networks as well as on the computer science itself has changed. I see now the challenge and the benefit of tool based software development in a different light. I see, that we need a information science, not a computer science. I understand, that we are still searching for the rules of information which correspond to the rules of physics in the mechanical engineering. Software Architects, Software Engineering, are terms with today expanded meaning.
Therefore, I want to add functional safety as theme for this blog, and this is well done, because metaphysics is the only hope to get further :) I will tell stories about communication from software engineers to safety engineers, the amusing stories as well as the horror at work.
So stay tuned :)
