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Isn't it time for an oversight agency that looks at code quality within safety-critical systems? The FDA forces oversight of drugs that less than 100,000 peopl
by achr2 11y ago
Isn't it time for an oversight agency that looks at code quality within safety-critical systems? The FDA forces oversight of drugs that less than 100,000 people a year will take. Yet there is no agency looking into the software quality of a car management system that millions of people will drive with every day.
- bradfa 11y agoThis will add a tremendous amount of cost to product development. This might be worthwhile if simple consumer or industry pressure doesn't work.
- arbitrage 11y ago> This will add a tremendous amount of cost to product development. Not that many people are getting killed, so it's an acceptable tradeoff?
- hga 11y agoYes, it's an potentially acceptable tradeoff. While the figures vary, economists and the like have estimates of how many people you'll kill for every N million dollars you extract from the economy (and they're below 10 million last time I checked). Just how much do you propose to extract with such a regime?
- achr2 11y agoI am not advocating that every aspect of a system is tested by an agency, I am simply saying that there should be a body that ensures that safety-critical software development follows a basic set of best practices - avoiding some of pitfalls mentioned in the article.
- celticninja 11y agoThat forces the cost onto the state and the state is also inefficient generally so it would take longer than an I ternary review. Then when a bug causes an issue it is the fault of the state for allowing it through and not the company for coding it. In addition private sector usually pays more so the state sector does not get the pick of the coders.
- achr2 11y agoI don't think that an agency should be responsible for the testing, just ensuring that software development best practices are in place, and that the company is actually doing their internal testing.