5 ms·

The sarcastic/negative implication of your example is that software engineering today is where civil engineering was 100+ years ago.

nickpeterson 6y ago
I don’t think that is too far off the mark. Given 8 more decades of progress we might even be able to produce reliable code. Webpages will be 100GB of JavaScript though
- m_mueller 6y ago
  I think reliability is, after a certain point, inverse proportional to the amount of code involved. So I'd disagree that we'll have even larger webpages then - the same way that in modern construction, heavy and thick stone & brick pillars have been replaced with comparatively light and strong steel-reinforced concrete. Maybe the equivalent would be just enough strongly typed code running on top of just enough, well tested & secure WASM?
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > Given 8 more decades of progress we might even be able to produce reliable code As the risk of nitpicking, we already can produce reliable code, but as piaste's comment states, it's rare to make the necessary investment. Avionics software and medical systems software is held to a very high standard, at great expense, but the average website or desktop application is not. > Webpages will be 100GB of JavaScript though I agree that the problem of bloat is likely to continue to worsen in the web, but that's just the web. Other sectors, like high-performance game engines, will continue to compete on efficiency.
nomoreusernames 6y ago
made me chuckle.
piaste 6y ago
Yes, but not because software engineers are worse human beings than civil engineers, which is all too often the undertone of these discussions. Rather, because software engineering hasn't killed enough people to advance; or when it has, it wasn't obviously the culprit. In which fields of software engineering do we find actual solid procedures and standards? Avionics. Medical hardware. Fields where the link between bug and death is as short as possible, and so the stakeholders have demanded solid engineering. What are the consequences of GP's acquaintance writing poor code? Some trading firm becomes slightly less efficient at trading. Impossible to evaluate the net human loss from it (if it's a loss at all). The civil engineering equivalent would be something like façade design or layout. If your building is ugly or confusing, it will annoy or waste the time of the people who live and work in it, but as long as it doesn't fall on their heads nobody is going to withdraw your certification.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > not because software engineers are worse human beings than civil engineers, which is all too often the undertone of these discussions I think the undertone is usually that the software developer at fault had no idea what they were doing, and had no place working on critical systems, rather than that they had ill intent.
- LoSboccacc 6y ago
  > software engineering hasn't killed enough people to advance and where it had, you get pretty serious control and certification process put in place to avoid it (Boeing notwithstanding)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    The 737 Max issues were not with the software.
    - fsflyer 6y ago
zanellato19 6y ago
I don't think that is the case - but that is certainly one interpretation of it. They were still engineers at the time though, and so are we.
elros 6y ago
Given software engineering is less than 200 years old while civil engineering is a few thousand years old, I don't see this as a negative at all.

nickpeterson 6y ago

I don’t think that is too far off the mark. Given 8 more decades of progress we might even be able to produce reliable code. Webpages will be 100GB of JavaScript though

m_mueller 6y ago
I think reliability is, after a certain point, inverse proportional to the amount of code involved. So I'd disagree that we'll have even larger webpages then - the same way that in modern construction, heavy and thick stone & brick pillars have been replaced with comparatively light and strong steel-reinforced concrete. Maybe the equivalent would be just enough strongly typed code running on top of just enough, well tested & secure WASM?
MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> Given 8 more decades of progress we might even be able to produce reliable code As the risk of nitpicking, we already can produce reliable code, but as piaste's comment states, it's rare to make the necessary investment. Avionics software and medical systems software is held to a very high standard, at great expense, but the average website or desktop application is not. > Webpages will be 100GB of JavaScript though I agree that the problem of bloat is likely to continue to worsen in the web, but that's just the web. Other sectors, like high-performance game engines, will continue to compete on efficiency.

nomoreusernames 6y ago

made me chuckle.

piaste 6y ago

Yes, but not because software engineers are worse human beings than civil engineers, which is all too often the undertone of these discussions. Rather, because software engineering hasn't killed enough people to advance; or when it has, it wasn't obviously the culprit. In which fields of software engineering do we find actual solid procedures and standards? Avionics. Medical hardware. Fields where the link between bug and death is as short as possible, and so the stakeholders have demanded solid engineering. What are the consequences of GP's acquaintance writing poor code? Some trading firm becomes slightly less efficient at trading. Impossible to evaluate the net human loss from it (if it's a loss at all). The civil engineering equivalent would be something like façade design or layout. If your building is ugly or confusing, it will annoy or waste the time of the people who live and work in it, but as long as it doesn't fall on their heads nobody is going to withdraw your certification.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> not because software engineers are worse human beings than civil engineers, which is all too often the undertone of these discussions I think the undertone is usually that the software developer at fault had no idea what they were doing, and had no place working on critical systems, rather than that they had ill intent.
LoSboccacc 6y ago
> software engineering hasn't killed enough people to advance and where it had, you get pretty serious control and certification process put in place to avoid it (Boeing notwithstanding)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  The 737 Max issues were not with the software.
  - fsflyer 6y ago

zanellato19 6y ago

I don't think that is the case - but that is certainly one interpretation of it. They were still engineers at the time though, and so are we.

elros 6y ago

Given software engineering is less than 200 years old while civil engineering is a few thousand years old, I don't see this as a negative at all.