4 ms·

There are a few aspects. One is that we don't understand the fundamentals of software as well as the underpinnings of other engineering disciplines. More impo

by ska 3y ago

There are a few aspects. One is that we don't understand the fundamentals of software as well as the underpinnings of other engineering disciplines. More importantly though, for the most part we choose not to do engineering. By which I mean this - we know how to do this better, and we apply those techniques in areas where the consequences of failure are high. Aerospace, medical devices, etc. It differs a bit industry to industry, but overall the lessons are the same. On the whole it a) looks a lot more like "typical" engineering than most software development and b) it is more expensive and slower. Overall, we seem to have collectively decided we are fine with flakier software that delivers new and more complex things faster, except where errors tend to kill people or expensive machines without intending to. The other contributing thing is it's typically vastly cheaper to fix software errors after the fact than, say, bridges.

omginternets 3y ago
The modern car contains within it a perfect example the dichotomy: 1. The ECU ("hard" engineering) 2. The infotainment system ("soft" engineering) Now, an interesting thing I have noticed is that "soft" software engineering pays more. Often substantially more.
- ska 3y ago
  I think your salary observation is more of a firmware vs. hardware, rather then "soft" vs "hard" engineering. Further to that, it's often informative to figure out what makes a company money. The highest paid software development roles tend to be doing things that are closer to revenue, on average. If you are a software developer at a hardware company (or an insurance company, or whatever), you aren't that close. Even worse if you are viewed as a cost center.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >Further to that, it's often informative to figure out what makes a company money. The highest paid software development roles tend to be doing things that are closer to revenue, on average. yeah. Who are those trillion dollar businesses and what do they rely on? - Apple: Probably the better example here since they focus a lot on user-facing value. But I'm sure they have their own deals, B2B market in certain industries, R&D, and ads to take into account - Microsoft: a dominant software house in nearly every aspect of the industry. But I wager most of their money comes not from users but other businesses. Virtually every other companies uses Windows, Word, and those that don't may still use Azure for servers. - Alphabet: ads. Need I say more? Users aren't the audience, they are the selling point to other companies. - Amazon: a big user facing market, but again similar to Microsoft. The real money is b2b servers. - Nvidia: Again, user facing products but the real selling point is to companies that need their hardware. In this case, a good 80% of general computing manufacturers. - Meta: Ads ans selling user data once again - Tesla: CEO politics aside, it's probably the 2nd best example. Split bewteen a user facing product that disrupted an industry and becoming a standard for fuel in the industry they disrupted. There's also some tangential products that shouldn't be underestimated, but overall a lot of value seems to come from serving the user. General lesson here is that b2b and ads are the real money makers. if you're one level removed that financial value drops immensely (but not necessarily to infeasible levels, far from it).
KeplerBoy 3y ago
> One is that we don't understand the fundamentals of software as well as the underpinnings of other engineering disciplines. That sounds like an awfully bold claim. I have the feeling we understand software a lot better than we understand mechanical engineering (and by extension material sciences) or fluid dynamics. By a big margin. I worked with finite element software and with CFD solvers, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to simulate a proper airflow over a simple airfoil and get the same results as in the wind tunnel.
- ska 3y ago
  > That sounds like an awfully bold claim. To the contrary, it's nearly canonical. Most of the problems pointed out in the 70s (mythical man month) have still not been resolved, 50 years later. >you wouldn't believe how hard it Oh, I'd believe it (I've designed and built similar things, and had colleagues in CFD). But you are definitely cherry picking here. The problem with CFD is we don't understand the fluid dynamics part very well; turbulence is a big unsolved problem still, though we have been generating better techniques. This is so true that in an undergraduate physics degree, there is usually a point where they say something like: "now that you think you know how lots of things work, let's introduce turbulence" But a lot of mechanical engineering and the underlying physics and materials science is actually pretty well understood, to the degree that we can be much more predictive about the trade offs than typically is possible in software. Same goes for electrical, civil, and chem. Each of them have areas of fuzziness, but also a pretty solid core.
  - imetatroll 3y ago
    The article is about delivering a complete, working project "on time". I have a neighbor whose home is being renovated and it is already 2x the time the contractor originally quoted. Of course it is easier for a developer to walk away from something incomplete than an architect and the contractors involved in a physical project, but still, I hardly think that there is really much difference in terms of timelines.
    - ska 3y ago

by ska 3y ago

omginternets 3y ago

The modern car contains within it a perfect example the dichotomy: 1. The ECU ("hard" engineering) 2. The infotainment system ("soft" engineering) Now, an interesting thing I have noticed is that "soft" software engineering pays more. Often substantially more.

ska 3y ago
I think your salary observation is more of a firmware vs. hardware, rather then "soft" vs "hard" engineering. Further to that, it's often informative to figure out what makes a company money. The highest paid software development roles tend to be doing things that are closer to revenue, on average. If you are a software developer at a hardware company (or an insurance company, or whatever), you aren't that close. Even worse if you are viewed as a cost center.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >Further to that, it's often informative to figure out what makes a company money. The highest paid software development roles tend to be doing things that are closer to revenue, on average. yeah. Who are those trillion dollar businesses and what do they rely on? - Apple: Probably the better example here since they focus a lot on user-facing value. But I'm sure they have their own deals, B2B market in certain industries, R&D, and ads to take into account - Microsoft: a dominant software house in nearly every aspect of the industry. But I wager most of their money comes not from users but other businesses. Virtually every other companies uses Windows, Word, and those that don't may still use Azure for servers. - Alphabet: ads. Need I say more? Users aren't the audience, they are the selling point to other companies. - Amazon: a big user facing market, but again similar to Microsoft. The real money is b2b servers. - Nvidia: Again, user facing products but the real selling point is to companies that need their hardware. In this case, a good 80% of general computing manufacturers. - Meta: Ads ans selling user data once again - Tesla: CEO politics aside, it's probably the 2nd best example. Split bewteen a user facing product that disrupted an industry and becoming a standard for fuel in the industry they disrupted. There's also some tangential products that shouldn't be underestimated, but overall a lot of value seems to come from serving the user. General lesson here is that b2b and ads are the real money makers. if you're one level removed that financial value drops immensely (but not necessarily to infeasible levels, far from it).

KeplerBoy 3y ago

> One is that we don't understand the fundamentals of software as well as the underpinnings of other engineering disciplines. That sounds like an awfully bold claim. I have the feeling we understand software a lot better than we understand mechanical engineering (and by extension material sciences) or fluid dynamics. By a big margin. I worked with finite element software and with CFD solvers, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to simulate a proper airflow over a simple airfoil and get the same results as in the wind tunnel.

ska 3y ago
> That sounds like an awfully bold claim. To the contrary, it's nearly canonical. Most of the problems pointed out in the 70s (mythical man month) have still not been resolved, 50 years later. >you wouldn't believe how hard it Oh, I'd believe it (I've designed and built similar things, and had colleagues in CFD). But you are definitely cherry picking here. The problem with CFD is we don't understand the fluid dynamics part very well; turbulence is a big unsolved problem still, though we have been generating better techniques. This is so true that in an undergraduate physics degree, there is usually a point where they say something like: "now that you think you know how lots of things work, let's introduce turbulence" But a lot of mechanical engineering and the underlying physics and materials science is actually pretty well understood, to the degree that we can be much more predictive about the trade offs than typically is possible in software. Same goes for electrical, civil, and chem. Each of them have areas of fuzziness, but also a pretty solid core.
- imetatroll 3y ago
  The article is about delivering a complete, working project "on time". I have a neighbor whose home is being renovated and it is already 2x the time the contractor originally quoted. Of course it is easier for a developer to walk away from something incomplete than an architect and the contractors involved in a physical project, but still, I hardly think that there is really much difference in terms of timelines.
  - ska 3y ago