At a recent software engineering management course in the United States, the participants were given an awkward question to answer: “If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control software, would you get off immediately? If yes, please put up your hands.” Then a forest of hands were raised, but one programmer called Smith did not put up his hand. When asked what he would do, he replied that he had no fear and would be quite happy to stay on board. “With my team’s software,” he said, “the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the runway, let alone take off.”

1. T 2. T 3. F 4. F 5. T