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This is a fine sentiment, but it's hardly a bright-line rule. We don't criticize Twitter's handling of abuse or fascists because they promised us a platform fre

This is a fine sentiment, but it's hardly a bright-line rule. We don't criticize Twitter's handling of abuse or fascists because they promised us a platform free of abusive fascists; Twitter didn't promise us shit except 140 character messages. All the problems were emergent. So many of the great (financial) success stories of our sector are about startups stumbling into an untapped demand, and then running with it for as long as the money lasts. Nobody sets out to build a bridge – they build a 2x4 plank, and then realize that rather a lot of people want to walk on it.

mulmen 9y ago
Bullshit. Justify the recent Hawaii emergency notification in the context of an airliner. You can't because we would never tolerate that kind of unreliability in our transportation infrastructure. Twitter does what it says on the tin. That doesn't mean software engineering is a mature discipline.
- oblio 9y ago
  In a sense, software engineering is quite mature. It's probably matured a lot faster than most other engineering branches. We know about static analysis, fuzzing, unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, Continuous Integration/Deployment/Delivery, etc., etc. It's just that maturity costs a lot of money. 95% of the software produced just doesn't need that and the client can't even afford it.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Most people also cannot afford to buy cars or houses in one go, yet regulations don't get ignored because of them.
    - oblio 9y ago
      There is almost no way we can compare cars and houses with the average CRUD software, in terms of damage they can do to a person. More than that, even in the case where damage does happen, most people would rate physical damage higher than non-physical damage, for example monetary loss.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        Surely we can, it is all a matter of what CRUD software is managing. There are institutions that rate what the damage actually means.

mulmen 9y ago

Bullshit. Justify the recent Hawaii emergency notification in the context of an airliner. You can't because we would never tolerate that kind of unreliability in our transportation infrastructure. Twitter does what it says on the tin. That doesn't mean software engineering is a mature discipline.

oblio 9y ago
In a sense, software engineering is quite mature. It's probably matured a lot faster than most other engineering branches. We know about static analysis, fuzzing, unit testing, integration testing, functional testing, Continuous Integration/Deployment/Delivery, etc., etc. It's just that maturity costs a lot of money. 95% of the software produced just doesn't need that and the client can't even afford it.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Most people also cannot afford to buy cars or houses in one go, yet regulations don't get ignored because of them.
  - oblio 9y ago
    There is almost no way we can compare cars and houses with the average CRUD software, in terms of damage they can do to a person. More than that, even in the case where damage does happen, most people would rate physical damage higher than non-physical damage, for example monetary loss.
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      Surely we can, it is all a matter of what CRUD software is managing. There are institutions that rate what the damage actually means.