are programmers "failures"?

[aamiel]

I am not a programmer but I do work on replacing ATC systems.
With those, there are serious testing requirements (here) but the CAA themselves say we don't really know what testing we need.
The main difference with financial software is that there are many layers of protection, the computer program, the controller, the plane, the pilot, the size of the sky...
There are issues in ATC software that crop up regularly (every few years we shut down the UK sky), that are know about, etc... my job is to minimise them but I can tell you I am very busy so it is not perfect and we live with it.