[pfflier]

It sounds like straight up Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." If they don't engineer out the potential for error, the error will occur.

So true Even with the best of intentions you can't make a system "idiot proof".

[Windcatcher]

When I was working on secure comms (for a Navy program but what I wrote wound up being reused in something more widespread) I was consumed with concerns about making it idiot-proof. I figured the equipment would possibly be around for fifty years. I asked myself, how dead-simple can I make this architecture and software so an engineer thirty years from now can upgrade it without screwing it up?