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As of this morning (NZ time), useful contact has been lost with the craft and NASA are left scratching their heads as to exactly why this is.

If mission control can't encourage the craft to sort itself out then this mission may well end up posing more questions than it answers.

Why was the surface so very different to what was expected -- having the appearance of mud rather than sandy soil?

What would cause an otherwise flawless mission to suddenly go off the rails without warning?

Fortunately, another lander is due to crash-down on the 24th and, all fingers crossed, perhaps this one will have more luck.

Let's just hope however, that the problem isn't due to an obscure software bug. If it is, the second craft could well suffer the same fate as the first.

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If the problems are tracked down to a software bug, it will once again highlight the extreme difficulties associated with creating "correct" code.

To be honest, despite all their weaknesses and foibles, it must be acknowledged that producing any non-trivial piece of software, such as the stuff Microsoft churns out, is a job of monumental scale. Making the same code 100 percent secure and bug-free is impossible.

Software is tricky stuff you see. No matter how many people you put on the job and regardless of the methodologies used, there will always be a bug somewhere, just waiting to bite you on the bum at some inopportune time.

That complex modern commercial and consumer software actually works as well and as reliably as it does is a great achievement -- especially when you consider the huge number of source-code lines and individual logic paths such programs contain.

While being a systems analyst or programmer no longer carries the mystique nor creates the awe it once did, it's good to remember just how much skill it takes to perform these jobs to the high standards we now expect from such people.

Of course if the Mars mission turns out to have been scuttled by an errant line or two of code, I suspect there'll be at least a handful of programmers over at NASA who won't be feeling too flash.

When I first became a part of the computer programming industry some 25 years ago, a lot of the code was pretty buggy. These days it's improved immensely, despite its dramatically increased complexity.

Has this improvement come from better languages, better programmer training, better project management, better debugging and testing tools or what?

The truth is, it's probably a little bit of all the above -- but if you're a programmer who's been in the game for 10 years or more, what do you contribute the majority of the improvement to?

Lighten Up
As of next week, the lighten-up section will get its own page and I'll be adding material to it as it's received from readers or I stumble across it while surfing the web.

In the meantime, I have to say that the cupboard is still a bit bare so start scouring the net for the best and worst you can find.

A kind reader sent me this news story which, the suggested, was somewhat appropriate in light of my own recent woes.

Like most people, I've always yearned for a necktie that was patterned after popular infectious diseases. Well tip me over with a feather, at last there is an online store that sells these sought-after garments!

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