Side Effects

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

I'm reading A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge and it's pretty great. There is a whole lot going on, but on page 100 they are dealing with some fairly mundane issues. They are trying to graft a competitors communication system onto their low level hardware and we get this paragraph:

"Sure, we can handle weird calendars, but that's in front-end applications." Arlo Dinh has been an apprentice programmer; now he was in charge of software mods. " Our new, um, employers are using Qeng Ho internal tools. ' There will be side effects.'" Arlo intoned the mantra ominously.

Effing software.