4 ms·
Let's imagine for a while, that an engineer is designing a bridge, or an architect a new building. The companies that pay for them are in a hurry and want to cu
by iagooar 10y ago
Let's imagine for a while, that an engineer is designing a bridge, or an architect a new building. The companies that pay for them are in a hurry and want to cut costs as much as any other.
Do you think it would be an ethical thing to build a less secure bridge or building just for the sake of getting them out quicker and/or cheaper?
So this is how I see it with software engineering. Of all the engineering branches, we take our job the least serious and are not good at defending our decisions or taking the required time to build our software the way it should be. We just assume that our customers know better and have better reasons to get out to the market and that there is nothing we, as software engineers, can do about it.
So in a way, that guy you talked to was kind of right, because it is your responsibility to defend the need of fast, efficient and maintainable software. It is the customer's responsibility to take care of the product and plan accordingly.
- IanCal 10y ago> Do you think it would be an ethical thing to build a less secure bridge or building just for the sake of getting them out quicker and/or cheaper? Yes, and we do this constantly. Nothing is ever designed to be completely safe because we'd never get anything done. Bridges aren't all designed to withstand magnitude 11 earthquakes. We arguably go too far because the costs of the final safety features could save far more lives if used for something like vaccinations, but that's not key here. As always, the trick is where you draw the line.
- NicoJuicy 10y agoWhen a bridge collapses, people could die and it would take weeks or months to rebuild. When your app fails due to some reason, you can fix it sometimes under the 3 minutes. Azure, amazon, Google all have status pages. A bridge doesn't.
- falcolas 10y agoThree minutes of Amazon being down is measured in the millions of dollars lost. People's careers (or businesses) are destroyed over such numbers.