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I can guarantee you that "We have to add a bureaucracy to fix all of this" won't actually fix anything. I've seen proposals for regulating software engineers.

by kabdib 4y ago

I can guarantee you that "We have to add a bureaucracy to fix all of this" won't actually fix anything. I've seen proposals for regulating software engineers. They've all been transparent and embarrassing land-grabs. One (thankfully) failed effort in California was basically a series of electrical engineering requirements with a little bit of firmware focus, and some idiotic-even-at-the-time development methodology; absolutely useless for the stated purpose.

wolverine876 4y ago
> I can guarantee you that "We have to add a bureaucracy to fix all of this" won't actually fix anything. Is that based on some expertise? Many, many other professions - almost all, I think - have professional licensing bodies and they function well. I think we can figure it out too.
- djbebs 4y ago
  They appear to function well to people who havent got a clue what they're talking about. By and large they are either worthless or actively harmful.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Could you provide a basis for that claim? I haven't heard it from the many people I know in those professions, who appear to respect their licensing bodies.
    - kabdib 4y ago
      Don't know about other professions, but all of the proposals I've seen for licensing software engineers have been highly bogus (with lot of irrelevant material) and politically suspect. Here's a great summary: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/Licensure/indexba53.html?page_id=2 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-... The observations about the program in Texas mirror what I've seen in similar proposals in California. Namely, tests that concentrate on EE and hardware, with the occasional toss-in of some lifecycle garbage that is not state-of-the-art, nor uncontested in value. The IEEE was behind at least one effort to bring software engineering under its umbrella, which would explain why the state thinks software engineers need to know stuff like Kirchhoff's law and impedance matching. You can go your whole software engineering career without needing that. The proponents don't seem to actually care about what's in the tests, just that they license people, get the fees, and make room for further power grabs. It's pretty unlikely that any improvement in software is going to spring from that kind of arrangement. Licensing is just more "Keep beating the engineers until things improve" with a taste of "Nice career you have here, be a shame if something happened to it, right?" thrown in. We already get that in industry, why invite the government, too?
      - wolverine876 4y ago
        I get that you are unhappy about it but (no disrespect intended) that doesn't tell me anything. I know it's common, but the more exaggerated, emotional language I see, the less interest or faith I have in the reasoning and knowledge of the argument.
kajaktum 4y ago
Tell me this, you discovered that your employer stores the user password in plain text. You propose change, but they refused; who do you report? In my experience, pretty much nothing happen until shit hits the bed, there's pretty much zero professionalism in the industry outside of some semi-autistic and OCD people that can't stand this stuff and decides to do it correctly by spending the weekend making sure things are build with correctness in mind. Most people just write stuff until it "works" and leave it at that.
- fzeroracer 4y ago
  The problem in this scenario isn't software engineering necessarily, it's lack of punishment. Companies do things like this because it's cheap and they can factor in security breaches as simply a cost of doing business. A lot of these problems come as a result of an engineer prototyping or creating something on a tight budget, which then eventually gets deployed out either because said engineer leaves or against their own wishes. It's similar to housing. Training engineers to build a house correctly doesn't matter if the punishment for the house not meeting code is a slap on the wrist for their employer. Because their employer will just tell them to build fast and ignore the right way to build something.

by kabdib 4y ago

wolverine876 4y ago

> I can guarantee you that "We have to add a bureaucracy to fix all of this" won't actually fix anything. Is that based on some expertise? Many, many other professions - almost all, I think - have professional licensing bodies and they function well. I think we can figure it out too.

djbebs 4y ago
They appear to function well to people who havent got a clue what they're talking about. By and large they are either worthless or actively harmful.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Could you provide a basis for that claim? I haven't heard it from the many people I know in those professions, who appear to respect their licensing bodies.
  - kabdib 4y ago
    Don't know about other professions, but all of the proposals I've seen for licensing software engineers have been highly bogus (with lot of irrelevant material) and politically suspect. Here's a great summary: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-11/Licensure/indexba53.html?page_id=2 https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-... The observations about the program in Texas mirror what I've seen in similar proposals in California. Namely, tests that concentrate on EE and hardware, with the occasional toss-in of some lifecycle garbage that is not state-of-the-art, nor uncontested in value. The IEEE was behind at least one effort to bring software engineering under its umbrella, which would explain why the state thinks software engineers need to know stuff like Kirchhoff's law and impedance matching. You can go your whole software engineering career without needing that. The proponents don't seem to actually care about what's in the tests, just that they license people, get the fees, and make room for further power grabs. It's pretty unlikely that any improvement in software is going to spring from that kind of arrangement. Licensing is just more "Keep beating the engineers until things improve" with a taste of "Nice career you have here, be a shame if something happened to it, right?" thrown in. We already get that in industry, why invite the government, too?
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      I get that you are unhappy about it but (no disrespect intended) that doesn't tell me anything. I know it's common, but the more exaggerated, emotional language I see, the less interest or faith I have in the reasoning and knowledge of the argument.

kajaktum 4y ago

Tell me this, you discovered that your employer stores the user password in plain text. You propose change, but they refused; who do you report? In my experience, pretty much nothing happen until shit hits the bed, there's pretty much zero professionalism in the industry outside of some semi-autistic and OCD people that can't stand this stuff and decides to do it correctly by spending the weekend making sure things are build with correctness in mind. Most people just write stuff until it "works" and leave it at that.

fzeroracer 4y ago
The problem in this scenario isn't software engineering necessarily, it's lack of punishment. Companies do things like this because it's cheap and they can factor in security breaches as simply a cost of doing business. A lot of these problems come as a result of an engineer prototyping or creating something on a tight budget, which then eventually gets deployed out either because said engineer leaves or against their own wishes. It's similar to housing. Training engineers to build a house correctly doesn't matter if the punishment for the house not meeting code is a slap on the wrist for their employer. Because their employer will just tell them to build fast and ignore the right way to build something.