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What makes software so special in engineering, aside from the amazingly terrible culture we've crafted around it? Change the phrase "software bug" to "engineer

by subway 8y ago

What makes software so special in engineering, aside from the amazingly terrible culture we've crafted around it? Change the phrase "software bug" to "engineering error". Then consider the liabilities involved with the manufacture of any real-world-might-kill-someone product. The lawyer's view starts to make a helluva lot more sense.

khedoros1 8y ago
> What makes software so special in engineering, aside from the amazingly terrible culture we've crafted around it? Millions of malicious people constantly attacking it with cheap equipment from a distance with little chance of being caught doing so?
- true_religion 8y ago
  Whilst that is true, it doesn't have to be that way. If from day one, liability for software bugs lead back to whomever wrote the code, then the world would be a much different place. For one thing, we would be much more conservative in how we wrote code. Libraries would be vetted, with insurance contracts attached to them. Programming languages would not allow for dynamic data, type coercion, or weak typing. In the 80s, rather than C rising to prominence, Ada would have. Haskell would be our generations Javascript, and XHTML would have won over HTML5 simple because guessing how rendering should work would open up a browser maker to high fines and lawsuits. We'd have to rewrite our entire software stack from the ground up. It's not impossible, but we'd have to view it as a multi-decade transition like how the chemical industry was slowly forced to not use heavily polluting procedures.
hueving 8y ago
The pace of software innovation to lack of liability from simply writing code has brought us the entire information age.
posterboy 8y ago
Other engineering disciplines are very conservative. Due to age, this doesn't compare well to software. There is tradition, but a lot of it military in origin, not civil: ARPA net, Grace Hopper, and the first bug, Turing and the Enigma. Stealworking as a military secret in comparison is thousands of years old. And so far, leaked DB content has per the official record not killed anyone ... perhaps a few astronauts but none of the people responsible in place to fix it, as would be the case in a family of incorporated electricians. We need a code-code.

by subway 8y ago

khedoros1 8y ago

> What makes software so special in engineering, aside from the amazingly terrible culture we've crafted around it? Millions of malicious people constantly attacking it with cheap equipment from a distance with little chance of being caught doing so?

true_religion 8y ago
Whilst that is true, it doesn't have to be that way. If from day one, liability for software bugs lead back to whomever wrote the code, then the world would be a much different place. For one thing, we would be much more conservative in how we wrote code. Libraries would be vetted, with insurance contracts attached to them. Programming languages would not allow for dynamic data, type coercion, or weak typing. In the 80s, rather than C rising to prominence, Ada would have. Haskell would be our generations Javascript, and XHTML would have won over HTML5 simple because guessing how rendering should work would open up a browser maker to high fines and lawsuits. We'd have to rewrite our entire software stack from the ground up. It's not impossible, but we'd have to view it as a multi-decade transition like how the chemical industry was slowly forced to not use heavily polluting procedures.

hueving 8y ago

The pace of software innovation to lack of liability from simply writing code has brought us the entire information age.

posterboy 8y ago

Other engineering disciplines are very conservative. Due to age, this doesn't compare well to software. There is tradition, but a lot of it military in origin, not civil: ARPA net, Grace Hopper, and the first bug, Turing and the Enigma. Stealworking as a military secret in comparison is thousands of years old. And so far, leaked DB content has per the official record not killed anyone ... perhaps a few astronauts but none of the people responsible in place to fix it, as would be the case in a family of incorporated electricians. We need a code-code.