I believe the relative ease — not to mention the lack of tangible cost — of software updates has created a cultural laziness within the software engineering community. Moreover, because more and more of the hardware that we create is monitored and controlled by software, that cultural laziness is now creeping into hardware engineering — like building airliners. Less thought is now given to getting a design correct and simple up front because it’s so easy to fix what you didn’t get right later.

Every time a software update gets pushed to my Tesla, to the Garmin flight computers in my Cessna, to my Nest thermostat, and to the TVs in my house, I’m reminded that none of those things were complete when they left the factory — because their builders realized they didn’t have to be complete. The job could be done at any time in the future with a software update.

Source: Shoddy Software Is Eating The World, And People Are Dying As A Result | Techdirt