A rogue computed Goto resulting from an uninitialised counter,

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A rogue computed Goto resulting from an uninitialised counter, discovered in training but which could have lost a Shuttle - more detail at http://www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/Incidents/DOCS/ComAndRep/Ariane/shuttle.html

Originally shared by Michael Umbricht

GOTO statement considered lethal

“…the code contained an uninitialized counter used in a “computed GOTO” command that resulted in all four machines simultaneously branching off to a memory address containing no code. This in turn led to simultaneous operating system crashes on each redundant system.”
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bonachea/294-8/hw1.html

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Great interview, thanks for the link! A funny/tragic excerpt:

[Jack Clemons, then manager of avionics flight software development and verification]: Our machines all stopped. Our greatest fear had materialized - a generic software problem. We went off to look at the problem. The crew was rather upset, and they went off to lunch.
[Alfred Spector, interviewer]: And contemplated their future on the next mission?