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I don't think it's fair to blame software engineering. Bugs happen, especially where there are no incentives to not have bugs. First of all justice system is to

I don't think it's fair to blame software engineering. Bugs happen, especially where there are no incentives to not have bugs. First of all justice system is to blame. Sentencing someone on assumption that some complicated software worked correctly is criminally stupid and should result on all people involved being barred from the profession. Another thing is that software should be treated as just a tool to help to fulfill legal/accounting requirements. If the software is wrong then the required documents are going to be wrong and that's supposedly auditable. This way there are incentives to produce/finance correct software because what is going to be judge and relied upon is not software itself but what it produces (the documents). Calls to make software engineers responsible will just result in fewer competent people willing to do the work. The justice system is incompetent enough already. Can you imagine lawyers discussing if your off by 1 bug was "criminal negligence" or just a normal mistake that happens? If you going to jail depends on what they decide you will just not take the job and no one sane/competent is going to take it either. The end result is going to be over payed morons writing software and then sometimes going to jail for it - not an improvement over current state of things.

Devasta 2y ago
Doctors, Surgeons, Lawyers are able to manage it fine, software engineering could do it as well. If you could show a constellation of unit and integration tests, well defined schemas and interfaces, for both your code and your dependencies, and a responsible engineering culture then the chances of going to jail are going to be next to nil. People recoil at the idea only because they see that very very little implemented today would be work that anyone would stand by.
- t43562 2y ago
  Good practises still result in bugs. How is the bug handled after it is found? That is a management responsibility.
  - Devasta 2y ago
    "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? Thats not my department." says Wernher Von Braun...
    - t43562 2y ago
      I think the people who paid Von Braun take 99.99% of the responsibility for what happened - they decided to kill people and chose one of many possible ways to do it. They could just as easily have poured their money into something else. As for von Braun himself, he got employed and looked after for the rest of his life despite being part of the decision (I think) to use slave labour to build his rockets - and that really was a management decision.

Devasta 2y ago

Doctors, Surgeons, Lawyers are able to manage it fine, software engineering could do it as well. If you could show a constellation of unit and integration tests, well defined schemas and interfaces, for both your code and your dependencies, and a responsible engineering culture then the chances of going to jail are going to be next to nil. People recoil at the idea only because they see that very very little implemented today would be work that anyone would stand by.

t43562 2y ago
Good practises still result in bugs. How is the bug handled after it is found? That is a management responsibility.
- Devasta 2y ago
  "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? Thats not my department." says Wernher Von Braun...
  - t43562 2y ago
    I think the people who paid Von Braun take 99.99% of the responsibility for what happened - they decided to kill people and chose one of many possible ways to do it. They could just as easily have poured their money into something else. As for von Braun himself, he got employed and looked after for the rest of his life despite being part of the decision (I think) to use slave labour to build his rockets - and that really was a management decision.