Exactly 30 years ago, one of the biggest movies on the importance of software quality hit theaters.
“Independence Day” (1996) revamps H.G. Wells’s “The war of the worlds” (1897) about aliens invading earth, for an American 90s audience. It’s a crazy summer blockbuster with lots of special effects—from the time back when special effects were special, love it! At the same time, it captures an era: It transfers Wells’s parable on British colonialism to the post-Cold-War moment where people briefly could think that the one thing to ever threaten American hegemony could only be extraterrestrial powers.
But what I, as a software engineer, love about the movie is its thesis on the one thing that might bring down an extremely advanced alien armada: its own poor software quality. Seems about right! I will not spoil the ending here, you should go watch it!
If you take the aliens‘ perspective for a second, it might well be the most epic tragedy on how necessary it is to get your software right. So let’s not be like the imperialist aliens! (Also in other regards, by the way.)