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>I think it's self-evident that there is no theoretical basis for software development in the way that would satisfy your criteria. I don't think this is self-

by jolux 9y ago

>I think it's self-evident that there is no theoretical basis for software development in the way that would satisfy your criteria. I don't think this is self-evident whatsoever. One of the problems in software engineering is that we never know when a solution is "right," we only know when it's vaguely not-wrong, and even then almost everything we create is still subtly wrong in a way we forgot to think about. Math is solid because there is certainty in the correctness of certain proofs, and these can be used as building blocks for further results. Philosophically speaking this is the closest we're going to get to "real" engineering practice in software, and we're pretty dang far from it if you know what that looks like. >Software dev is generally a scattershot haphazard endeavor that involves trying dozens of angles until one of them works. But this is a symptom of any pre-scientific field in engineering, it's not specifically endemic to software engineering. The main difference is that in software engineering we're applying math directly, and in other engineering fields we're applying science. In a certain sense, the natural sciences are purely empirical (modulo advanced physics of course, which overlaps with pure math and philosophy these days) while math and consequently computer science are purely rational. So, what are the solid elements in math? Proofs. Proofs are also how you ensure that the field actually moves forward and you're not stuck recreating solid results that already exist. Sound familiar? It happens constantly in software, but imperative and poorly-typed languages inhibit composability and reuse because they lend themselves easily to extremely specific solutions to general problems. >It's also self-evident that in most situations, correctness and reliability aren't a concern. The counterexamples account for maybe 1% of the field. 99% of the time, if your program breaks, you can pay someone to go fix it and no serious harm was done. Even Github outages, which affect almost all of us, hardly matter. This is preposterous. Just because lives are not in danger does not mean that it's not worth doing right by the solution, and frankly I think a lot more lives are waiting to be put in danger by crappy software with bad security than you realize. It's already become almost dogma that all software engineers need to have a deep understanding of security, and I don't understand why correctness can't fall under that rubric as well. If we're going to be having Geohot or even Google or whoever building self-driving cars for possibly billions of people, enormous critical infrastructure projects coming under computer control, etc, the whole industry from education on up is going to have to have a serious attitude adjustment to keep up with the demands of safety, security, and reliability. It might not matter 99% of the time, (I think it's a lot more than that of course) but we need to make sure that we can as a discipline deliver that 1% when it is absolutely critical, and as of right now it doesn't seem like we can.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
It might not matter 99% of the time, (I think it's a lot more than that of course) but we need to make sure that we can as a discipline deliver that 1% when it is absolutely critical, and as of right now it doesn't seem like we can. FWIW, we agree on this point. But it seems worth treating this 1% case as a separate discipline rather than trying to lump it together with software dev. No one would claim that NASA's software engineering is the same type of work as, say, writing a new HN feature. It's already become almost dogma that all software engineers need to have a deep understanding of security The most secure programs are those that undergo frequent penetration tests and have bug bounty programs. Speaking as a pentester, I think there's not much chance of regular software devs being any good at security. There's just too much to know. I want to agree with your other points, because in principle it's the correct thing. Unfortunately experience has taught us that the correct thing usually loses in the real world. Being first to market mattered way more for Ethereum than the fact that the DAO had a bug in their smart contract, for example. But there are hundreds or even thousands of examples of this type. If we pretend that a teenager hacking in their bedroom is doing something fundamentally different than what most developers do each day at their jobs, then we lose out on the ability of that teenager to innovate. We become an exclusionary clique rather than an inclusive group. Luckily market forces still prevent us from becoming that insular, but in the era of walled gardens it's easy to imagine we're not too far off from that fate. The main issue is that if we try to restrict the free market e.g. with legislation, then the important work will simply move overseas to areas without those restrictions. And unless you're proposing legal restrictions on the software dev trade, it's unclear how to enforce any of the proposals upthread.
- jolux 9y ago
  >No one would claim that NASA's software engineering is the same type of work as, say, writing a new HN feature. Well no, but the same underlying principles are still operating. The only difference is how much you care about heeding them. You don't need an aerospace engineering degree to make a paper airplane or a short bridge or a raft or whatever, but that doesn't mean that your knowledge of how to do so reliably and correctly wouldn't be improved by such a degree, or that if you're going to sell a product that you hope people will pay you for and subsequently depend on that you shouldn't bother trying to make it functional (in the "it works" sense) to the best of your abilities. >If we pretend that a teenager hacking in their bedroom is doing something fundamentally different than what most developers do each day at their jobs, then we lose out on the ability of that teenager to innovate. Ok, that teenager can hack, sure, just the same as they can build a two-stroke engine or an electronic alarm for their door or play around with nuclear fusion or whatever. But if they're going to sell those things and make claims about their safety and reliability, the validity of those claims should be enforced by an industry guild accreditation program or legal regulations or whatever. There's more than one way to skin this cat, but it really needs skinning. >The main issue is that if we try to restrict the free market e.g. with legislation, then the important work will simply move overseas to areas without those restrictions. The goalposts are being moved here, though, near as I can tell. I told you what I wanted done and why I thought it would work, and now you're telling me I have to figure out how to do it specifically in such a way that it can't be circumvented. I haven't thought up a specific solution to this question you pose, and as such I would point you in the direction of how liability works in other disciplines for similar cases and so on. I do actually think a lot of the same systems could work for enforcement, the biggest difficulty is actually figuring out what the principles should be. If the biggest problem with enforcement is that teenage hackers can't innovate anymore, I'm not really all that concerned. Romanticizing that image does nothing to change the hard realities of the industry.

by jolux 9y ago

sillysaurus3 9y ago

It might not matter 99% of the time, (I think it's a lot more than that of course) but we need to make sure that we can as a discipline deliver that 1% when it is absolutely critical, and as of right now it doesn't seem like we can. FWIW, we agree on this point. But it seems worth treating this 1% case as a separate discipline rather than trying to lump it together with software dev. No one would claim that NASA's software engineering is the same type of work as, say, writing a new HN feature. It's already become almost dogma that all software engineers need to have a deep understanding of security The most secure programs are those that undergo frequent penetration tests and have bug bounty programs. Speaking as a pentester, I think there's not much chance of regular software devs being any good at security. There's just too much to know. I want to agree with your other points, because in principle it's the correct thing. Unfortunately experience has taught us that the correct thing usually loses in the real world. Being first to market mattered way more for Ethereum than the fact that the DAO had a bug in their smart contract, for example. But there are hundreds or even thousands of examples of this type. If we pretend that a teenager hacking in their bedroom is doing something fundamentally different than what most developers do each day at their jobs, then we lose out on the ability of that teenager to innovate. We become an exclusionary clique rather than an inclusive group. Luckily market forces still prevent us from becoming that insular, but in the era of walled gardens it's easy to imagine we're not too far off from that fate. The main issue is that if we try to restrict the free market e.g. with legislation, then the important work will simply move overseas to areas without those restrictions. And unless you're proposing legal restrictions on the software dev trade, it's unclear how to enforce any of the proposals upthread.

jolux 9y ago
>No one would claim that NASA's software engineering is the same type of work as, say, writing a new HN feature. Well no, but the same underlying principles are still operating. The only difference is how much you care about heeding them. You don't need an aerospace engineering degree to make a paper airplane or a short bridge or a raft or whatever, but that doesn't mean that your knowledge of how to do so reliably and correctly wouldn't be improved by such a degree, or that if you're going to sell a product that you hope people will pay you for and subsequently depend on that you shouldn't bother trying to make it functional (in the "it works" sense) to the best of your abilities. >If we pretend that a teenager hacking in their bedroom is doing something fundamentally different than what most developers do each day at their jobs, then we lose out on the ability of that teenager to innovate. Ok, that teenager can hack, sure, just the same as they can build a two-stroke engine or an electronic alarm for their door or play around with nuclear fusion or whatever. But if they're going to sell those things and make claims about their safety and reliability, the validity of those claims should be enforced by an industry guild accreditation program or legal regulations or whatever. There's more than one way to skin this cat, but it really needs skinning. >The main issue is that if we try to restrict the free market e.g. with legislation, then the important work will simply move overseas to areas without those restrictions. The goalposts are being moved here, though, near as I can tell. I told you what I wanted done and why I thought it would work, and now you're telling me I have to figure out how to do it specifically in such a way that it can't be circumvented. I haven't thought up a specific solution to this question you pose, and as such I would point you in the direction of how liability works in other disciplines for similar cases and so on. I do actually think a lot of the same systems could work for enforcement, the biggest difficulty is actually figuring out what the principles should be. If the biggest problem with enforcement is that teenage hackers can't innovate anymore, I'm not really all that concerned. Romanticizing that image does nothing to change the hard realities of the industry.