What I refer to here is the fact that every early bridge collapse has informed the practise of the whole field after¹. Meanwhile in programming you will litera

What I refer to here is the fact that every early bridge collapse has informed the practise of the whole field after¹. Meanwhile in programming you will literally have someone hash their passwords using md5 in 2023. Maybe the difference is liability and possibly ending up in jail when things break. Software error has become a common excuse these days. If your companies enourmous unethical fuckup is exposed, just blame it on software error. Everybody understands: software errors happen and there is nothing we can do to prevent them from happening. Only this is not true. We know how to test code. We know about formally verified code. In safety critical domains (aviation, automotive, industrial, banking, ...) we have been doing this forever. I am not saying that every garden shed should have to follow the same rules as an interstate bridge, but maybe if our webservices fail spectacularly on a regular fashion maybe we should look towards software engineering practises that prevent things from failing that often? ¹ After that most bridge collapses have been due to organisational failures, like a lack of maintenance or a lack of oversight or enforcement of the established rules