>In civil engineering the stakes are high, people will lose lives. If you're building a bridge, yes. But it's not always so critical. This holds in software e

>In civil engineering the stakes are high, people will lose lives. If you're building a bridge, yes. But it's not always so critical. This holds in software engineering as well - If you're mucking about writing the next tetris, odds are, noone's going to die if you stuff it up. If you're writing embedded code in a medical device, lives definitely are at risk (and if you step back and look, not only is embedded code the majority of deployed code out there, but it also has some of the most mature development practices - not everything in software is agile) The problem arises when you try to draw the line between those two extremes - for example, who knew people were daft enough to follow GPS instructions that navigated them under bridges that were obviously too law, or off piers into harbours, or into oncoming traffic on one-way streets or onto train tracks (complete with oncoming trains). The criticality of the system you're developing isn't always a simple thing to determine. And don't forget - history has recorded very very similar arguments to yours that claim exactly what you're claiming, while arguing that mechanical engineering will never go from art to science...