Making Tax Digital has been coming for some time. I think they assumed that the accounting software market would evolve to meet all of the demands MTD would create. They're a very starry-eyed and utopian bunch at HMRC. They think the software industry is accountable to it's users 😂😂😂😂
The same principle applies though whatever way. Being forced to buy proprietary software to do something you could do by pen and paper isn’t a technological advance. It’s just dreadful government.
Actually I've just re-read what I've said there and it's incredibly glib and ahistorical. I'd have to admit that the existence of billions of generally stable computers capably of performing a vast variety of different tasks in the world may be the single greatest feat of human invention.
I mean, yes, some software companies have been allowed to indulge in monopolistic or oligopolistic behaviour (how the most invested-in software ever - word processing - is still so buggy is a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance), but even so, its a very accountable industry.
Technical answer: Turing’s finding that you can’t solve every mathematical problem in finite time also means you can’t build a fool proof bug checker, so you cannot verify your software as perfect and bugs will continue to escape into the wild.
You can have systems and tests and the rest to dramatically limit them. But I suspect the bulk of word processor bugs are a result of poorly understood or contradictory user feature requests.
But even using very commonly features (bullet points, ffs!) can be a minefield. I liked the way the early-1990s wysiwyg DTP program Ventura gave you separate stylesheet and text files that you could marry up.
Dos Wordperfect was pretty good. Simple but gave great results but everyone wants WYSIWYG.
Being a spectator on this, did Turings view take account of the possibility that processing speed and power would grow?